Kiev seeing emergency power outages

MOSCOW. Dec 19 (Interfax) - Kiev is seeing emergency power outages on Monday, the Ukrainian media said with the reference to the YASNO company's website.

"Emergency power outages have been put into place. There will be no scheduled outages until the situation stabilizes," the report said.

Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klichko said that damage was done to the city's infrastructure.

"Electric power and heating companies are working to rapidly stabilize power and heat supply," the Ukrainian media quoted the mayor as saying on a social network.

After sustaining damage in the early hours of Monday, the Ukrainian national power grid is operating at a stable frequency of 50 Hz synchronously with the European grid, and yet the situation is complicated and the resumption of power supply to households might take some time, the national power grid operator Ukrenergo said.

"The most complicated situation is currently in the central and eastern parts of Ukraine and in the areas along the Dnieper. Emergency power outage schedules have been introduced in the Sumy, Kharkov, Poltava, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Kirovograd, Zhitomir, Chernigov, Cherkassy, and Kiev regions and in the city of Kiev," Ukrainian media have quoted Ukrenergo's post on its social account on Monday.

The situation in the Ukrainian power grid was challenging on Monday morning, it said.

"Power supply has been provided on a priority basis to critical infrastructure elements. The resumption of power supply to households might take a long time," it said.

Ukrenergo CEO Vladimir Kudritsky said on Sunday that Ukraine would see a considerable deficit of electric power on Monday due to colder weather.

"There will be a substantial deficit today and tomorrow because of colder weather. All units of nuclear power plants in the controlled territory have resumed operation," the media quoted Kudritsky as saying during the United News telethon on Sunday.

There are still limitations on grids, which cannot provide their capacity to the fullest because of the damage they sustained, he said.

"I think we will see the full capacity of three nuclear power plant in the power grid in the near future. We will be able to increase the amount of generation available to our consumers in a day or two," Kudritsky said.