Thunderstorms leave 420 communities in 10 regions across Ukraine without electricity

MOSCOW. July 28 (Interfax) - Thunderstorms have left over 140,000 customers in 420 communities in the Vinnitsa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kiev, Kirovograd, Odessa, Poltava, Sumy, Kharkov, and Chernigov regions of Ukraine and in the part of the Zaporozhye region controlled by Kiev without electricity, Ukrainian media have reported with reference to the Energy Ministry.

Most of the communities cut off from power supply were in the Dnepropetrovsk region, where over 66,000 customers in 165 communities had no electricity, the ministry said.

Power engineers had to completely restore the load at one of the hydropower plants, where a transmission line was disconnected from the grid. The thunderstorm also disabled the national grid operator Ukrenergo's 330 kV power line in the Sumy region.

In Kherson, engineers returned electricity to over 100 customers who had been cut off from power following the flood caused by the Kakhovka Hydropower Plant disaster. Hence, the number of customers having no electricity in the city has been reduced to about 11,400 from 15,000.

The electricity generated in the national power system is enough to cover consumption, the Energy Ministry said. At the same time, according to the ENTSO-E website, Ukraine was to import 2,794 MW/h of electricity from Slovakia on Friday, which is nearly as much as it did on Thursday. The website does not indicate the amount of electricity Ukraine is importing from Moldova, while the Energy Ministry's preliminary data show it has been about a quarter of that imported from Slovakia over the past 24 hours.