About 500 communities in Ukraine cut off from power, including 66 due to bad weather - Ukrenergo
MOSCOW. Dec 1 (Interfax) - As of Friday morning, 66 populated areas in Ukraine were cut off from power supply because of adverse weather in the Zakarpattia, Kiev, Odessa, Sumy, and Chernigov regions, Ukrainian media have reported citing the national power grid operator Ukrenergo's statement on its social account.
The most complicated situation has been observed in the Odessa region, where 14 communities have remained without electricity for more than 24 hours. Bad weather has also caused problems to the Zakarpattia region, where 35 communities have been cut off from power supply, and the Sumy region (12 communities), the Energy Ministry said.
Another 426 populated areas across Ukraine have no power supply for technical and other reasons.
Power engineers have returned electricity to over 49,000 customers over the past 24 hours, the ministry said.
However, as Ukrenergo said, energy generated by Ukrainian power plants is still not enough to fully cover the demand of households and businesses.
"The dispatch center is not expecting a shortage in the power system within the next 24 hours, but what makes the situation worse is that, due to dense clouds, solar power plants cannot operate at maximum capacity. Therefore, we ask for electric energy to be consumed economically," it said.
No power consumption limits have been set, and no outage schedules have been applied or are planned for now, Ukrenergo said.
Ukraine has not exported electricity for several days in a row, and electricity imports took place on Friday chiefly at daytime from Slovakia, Romania, and Moldova, having decreased by more than 70% to 177 MW/h compared to Thursday, their maximum capacity reaching 34 MW during certain hours. Since December 1, technical import capacity from Europe to Ukraine and Moldova was 1,700 MW.
As reported earlier, extremely adverse weather disrupted power supply to over 2,000 communities across Ukraine as of the morning of November 27.