Over 500 communities remaining in blackout in Ukraine - Energy Ministry

MOSCOW. Oct 23 (Interfax) - A total of 543 communities throughout Ukraine remained partially or fully without electricity for various reasons, including technical breaches, as of Wednesday morning, Ukrainian media reported citing the Energy Ministry.

The transmission system operator introduced emergency outage schedules in a number of districts in the Poltava region to avoid overloads in the morning of October 23, the ministry said. "As soon as the repairs and restoration are completed, emergency outage schedules will be lifted," it said.

The emergency power outages were imposed in the Poltava region at 8:30 a.m. due to problems in the distribution system operator's grids, the Ukrenergo company said.

Ukrenergo also imposed emergency outages in a number of districts in the Sumy and Poltava regions to prevent the voltage level from falling in the past 24 hours, the ministry said. Power supply was restored to all consumers in the evening.

Consumers in the Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Sumy and Kharkov regions were also cut off from electricity over the past 24 hours.

Technological failures caused power outages of substations and household consumers in the Nikolayev, Poltava and Cherkassy regions. Power supply has been restored in all three regions.

In total, power supply was restored to 3,040 consumers over the past 24 hours.

Electricity is expected to be imported from Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary and Moldova with the total volume of 7,021 MWh with a peak capacity of 1,199 MW in some hours on Wednesday, it said.