Up to 12 hours without electricity: Ukrenergo predicts a schedule of outages for Ukrainians by the end of the week

Given the constant attacks from Russia, Ukraine’s energy system is operating under significant strain, forcing energy companies to use hourly and emergency power outages. The situation is expected to remain difficult in the coming days.

In many regions of Ukraine, restrictions on electricity supply will be introduced by the end of this week, which include three queues for servicing consumers. This means that some Ukrainians may be without electricity for up to 12 hours a day.

This information was shared by Vitaliy Zaichenko, Chairman of the Board of Ukrenergo NPC, during a telethon, as reported by RBC-Ukraine.

According to Zaichenko, there is no talk of stabilizing the situation at the moment, since the energy infrastructure is constantly under fire.

“Today, three queues in the hourly power outage schedules are actively operating. In different regions of Ukraine, the situation varies: somewhere the load is less, and somewhere, on the contrary, it causes more difficulties,” he noted.

On December 9, emergency shutdowns were introduced in Kharkiv, Sumy, and Poltava regions as a result of a Russian missile strike on an energy facility in the Sumy region, which created an imbalance in the regional energy hub.

“To regulate the system, emergency shutdowns had to be urgently introduced,” Zaichenko emphasized.

After that, these restrictions spread to other regions of Ukraine. As the head of Ukrenergo specified, the situation was worsened by several negative factors, including the emergency shutdown of generation and problems maintaining the proper level of production at hydroelectric power plants.

“To preserve the integrity of the unified energy system, dispatchers were forced to take measures regarding emergency shutdowns,” he concluded.

In addition, Ukrenergo officially announced that, starting December 10, hourly electricity shutdown schedules will be in effect nationwide, and consumption restrictions for industry have been introduced.