Wartime Energy- System Operation in Ukraine from 2014 to 2022

Here is my article for the paper version of Solar Today magazine written in July 2022

The war in Ukraine has opened another perspective for the energy industry.

Russia now uses gas and oil as weapons in the economic war against Ukraine and all European Union countries. That process is political, but it also is a basic reminder of well-known economic facts:?if you want security, you have to control all suppliers or be self-sufficient without any individual one of them.

Here is the story of the development of electrical generation from renewable sources in Ukraine from the beginning of the war in 2014 until today, when after more than ?????150 days of attacks, our electrical system still functions, even under missile bombardment.

The war began in 2014. Russia began by seizing Crimea and part of Eastern Ukraine. We lost half of nearly 1 GW of renewable energy sources when these areas were disconnected from Ukraine and connected to the Russian electrical grid.?Also, Ukraine lost about 15% of its economy and all of its anthracite coal mines. Anthracite coal was used for Ukrainian thermal power plants until?2014.?

The situation was highly dangerous for the Ukrainian energy system. Fortunately, approximately 65% of the needed electrical energy was produced by nuclear power plants and hydropower plants. We received some anthracite coal from the United States and South Africa. Also, we had stored coal that helped us make it through?2014 without problems.

During the next few years, all of our thermal power plants were reconstructed to use stone coal from existing Ukrainian coal mines.?The import of coal also continued.

Before the war, Ukraine signed the Paris Climate Agreement and, in 2015, introduced a law to support renewable energy sources with a feed-in tariff. The conditions proved to be favorable for investors, and from 2015 to 2021, about 6 GW of industrial photovoltaic installations, 1.2 GW of small private PV?plants, and 1.2 GW of wind turbines were built, as well as about 1 GW of new hydropower plants.

By the end of 2021, about?9 GW of renewable energy and 6.5 GW of hydropower were installed.

Huge progress during these war years resulted from good profits, fixed tariffs, and a low entry threshold was not as high as for the construction of nuclear power plants and large thermal power plants.

Ukraine’s progress shows that even war cannot stop investments in profitable business projects.?I think this experience may also be true for other countries.

The technical mode of work for renewable energy in the Ukrainian market is not optimal because we don’t have gas peakers and energy storage in the Ukrainian grid. The grid operators can use thermal power plants, nuclear power plants, and hydropower plants for regulation, and only then can they limit the generation of renewable sources. Limiting renewable energy is used as a way of regulation, which shows a huge need to improve the balanca of the system.

In 2015 Ukraine started intensively preparing to synchronize with the energy system of the European Union and to join the European?Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity. The Ukrainian energy grid was a part of the earlier Soviet grid until Feb. 23, 2022,?and was synchronized with the networks of Russia and Belarus.

In the summer of 2021, the Ukrainian energy system was operated in island mode for one week. This mode is dangerous because the power reserve is lost, and in the event of an accident, loss of stability of the power system is possible. Theoretically, it can result in desynchronization of the power-system nodes, shutting down some consumers and even physically damaging the electrical equipment.

The same experiment was to be done in the winter of 2022. It began on Feb.?23, and the next day at 4 A.M., Russia began shelling Ukrainian cities with missiles and invaded the territories of eight out of 24??regions of Ukraine. The active war started.

On the first day, the grid operator turned off all sporadic power sources to provide a safe mode of managing the system's load-coverage schedule during the island mode of operation. After four days, it returned to normal regulation. During the next month until March 16, the energy system of Ukraine worked in island mode!

Ukraine was able to ensure not only the functioning of the system during this time but also the performance of all necessary tests. It was even able to prevent consumers from losing power.?????????

Since the beginning of the war in 2014, Ukraine's energy sector has lost about 30% of its energy consumption. The loss did not happen at once, so it was possible to adjust. This negative trend has played a positive role in the current situation because it has significantly reduced fuel consumption from thermal power plants.

On?24 February 2022 coal was stored in warehouses for testing, production was carried out in relatively safe regions, and overland import logistics were established.

In addition, flooding led to unusually effective operations of hydropower plants.

In sum, we can say that the technical key to success was a significant excess of generating capacity compared to consumption needs.

At a time when peak consumption has fallen to 10-10.6 GW, a total installed generation capacity of about 54 GW of various generating types is available in Ukraine. The normal spring-to-summer consumption is around 14-16 GW. Of course, a significant share of these capacities is obsolete thermal power plants, but the installed capacity of renewable energy, hydropower plants, and nuclear power plants, in general, is also two times higher than consumption.

As a result, the energy system of Ukraine not only passed all tests and joined ENTSO-E, but it was noted that 87% of electricity in Ukraine is generated from nuclear power plants, hydropower plants, and renewables.?This figure rose from the 65%?we had during peacetime.

Achieving?87% carbon-neutral electrical generation shows that the target of carbon-neutral generation is close.

War always brings destruction. It has impacted Ukraine’s energy industry.

During the first month of the war, many main high-voltage lines were destroyed. On the most difficult days, about 30 lines were destroyed, interrupting the normal modes of energy transmission and the operation of relay protection and automation. Their reconfiguration by personnel took place in bomb shelters of cities under shelling and at substations in the zone of destruction by Russian artillery.

Damage was also caused to the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. It has been idle since the accident in 1986 and does not generate electricity, but it is very important to provide power to the cooling circuits there. Russian soldiers were sent to capture the station. First, they damaged the nuclear-waste-storage area with artillery fire. Then they dug trenches in nuclear-burial soils. They did not understand what a nuclear power plant is and destroyed the power lines for the plant's own needs.

To keep the cooling circuit powered, maintenance personnel stole diesel from Russian soldiers and provided electricity with a generator. Personnel spent 26 days at the station with no relief. After the Russian troops were removed from??Chornobyl, a destroyed laboratory was discovered. They destroyed or stole everything they could.

But the most critical moment for the energy system came when Russian troops shelled the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant. This is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, with a capacity of 6 GW. At the time of capture, it generated 2 GW. As a result, there was an emergency disconnection of the station from the power system that caused the loss of 2 GW of stable generation during night mode when there was?5 GW of total Ukrainian consumption.

The shelling happened when the system was in island mode and created the most difficult challenge for the power system. It was managed by providing reserves from other nuclear, hydro and thermal power plants. So far, the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant is still under the control of Russian troops. A?catastrophic situation at the plant could occur at any moment due to its inept influence on operational personnel.??????????????????????????????????

The Zaporizhzhya incident demonstrates the importance of having sufficient reserves.

It is also an example of the lack of enforcement of the United Nations Charter and the International Atomic Energy Agency charter, which directly prohibits the invasion of peaceful nuclear facilities. Both of these organizations showed almost no reaction.

A striking example of the destruction of the energy infrastructure caused by the war is the damage to the Uglegorska thermal power plant, with 3.6 GW of power destroyed by rocket fire. ?????

In Merefa, two Iskander missiles fired from the territory of Russia damaged a 2 -?MW PV?plant. The crater from these missiles was 5.5 meters deep. Many panels, inverters, and substations were damaged. Restoration is possible and is expected to be carried out. ???? There will be future proceedings to assess damages and secure compensation from Russia.

???The crater from Iskander missile in Merefa, Kharkiv district, Ukraine (Credit: Stanislav Ignatiev: https://tinyurl.com/2s4m4h54)

From 1,673 MW of installed wind farms, Russia has occupied 1317?MW. About 17.6 MW were also damaged or destroyed. The combined loss is approximately 1% of the total installed capacity.

Damaged wind turbine in the Sivas WPP, Kherson district, Ukraine (Credit: Andriy Konechenkov, Chairman of the Board of the Ukrainian Wind Energy Associacion, https://uwea.com.ua/)

?With PV plants the situation is much better – about 5.5-6 GW from 7.5 GW is under the control of Ukraine. The greatest danger to solar generation from the war is the suspected massive plundering by Russian soldiers of PV plants.????

After the liberation of the territory, a long demining process awaits, as the Russians have planted mines wherever there is hope to kill Ukrainians. Only then will we learn the full extent of the destruction.

We can conclude that the presence of large generation nodes increases the risks in the event of military conflicts.

If two Iskander missiles hit nuclear power plants instead of a PV plant, I imagine the damage could be comparable to the Chornobyl disaster. In contrast, the actual impact of such rockets on a?solar station led to damage that can be relatively easily repaired. Russia captured wind capacities because they were located close to Crimea and weren't diversified in all territories like PV.????

Nuclear power plant capacities were captured. The extremely vague position of the UN?and the IAEA about acts of nuclear terrorism by Russia greatly affects the risks of having large nuclear power plants.

Despite the tremendous obstacles, thanks to nuclear power plants, hydropower plants, and renewable energy, we were able to achieve a carbon -?neutrality indicator of 87%.

So we cannot talk about abandoning nuclear power, but rather we need to develop a plan to reformat generation into small modular reactors that fully fit into the concept of distributed generation.?????????

Massive damage to power lines only exacerbates the effect of the failure of large energy nodes. Building a network devoid of large nodes and saturated with distributed sources of generation is the way we should build future electrical systems in Ukraine.

And in distributed systems, the economic factor cannot be the priority, since power reserves are always required for the stable operation of the system. It’s only thanks to such reserves that Ukraine was able to pass the isolated-mode test in the face of the loss of 30 high-voltage lines and 6 GW from nuclear power plants. Looking forward, the energy sector of Ukraine will be able to strengthen the energy system of the European Union with energy exports of up to 6 GW in upcoming years if the situation goes well.