Ukraine's DTEK Energo planning to continue demothballing TPP units

MOSCOW. July 7 (Interfax) - DTEK Energo has demothballed one unit at one of its thermal power plants (TPP) and is planning to demothball the next one this year in order to increase the available capacity of generation by over than 500 MW, Ildar Saleyev, the director general of the company, said.

"At the end of last year and the beginning of this year, we demothballed one unit, which we have not done in a long time. It enabled integrating the additional unit into the energy system throughout the winter. And we have plans of demothballing another unit for this year," Saleyev said in an interview with Ukrainian media outlets.

These units were standing idle for technical reasons, therefore, reconstruction has been performed and still is underway, he said. At the same time, this also affected the growth of the cost of planned maintenance of TPPs from 2.2 billion hryvni last year to 3.5 billion hryvni this year, Saleyev said.

"Those are also extra funds, because, when comparing to the previous period, we have not performed reconstruction and demothballing [then]," he said.

Demothballing of the aforementioned units will add more than 500 MW to the energy system, Saleyev said.

The cost of the ongoing repair campaign has grown 1.5 times due to the need for more in-depth repair of TPPs after their increased work in the fall-winter period of 2022-2023 and inflation, which added 25-30% to the budget, he said.