What are preventive outages, how they work and whether to expect them in the future: YASNO answers
Kyiv • UNN
Sergiy Kovalenko explained the reasons for the preventive power outages in Ukraine due to the training of Russian strategic aviation. He also spoke about the peculiarities of the power system and the possibility of further outages.
YASNO CEO Serhiy Kovalenko explained why this morning a preventive outage was introduced in Ukraine and whether such outages will become permanent, UNN reports.
"Today was a tense morning. Russia was training its strategic aviation, Ukraine was training its energy system, and people, as it turned out, have memories.
Because it happened that a significant number of people have forgotten what happened in early 2023. And at that time, let me remind you, preventive outages were almost a classic of the genre," Kovalenko wrote.
So he reminded us what a preventive shutdown is and how it works.
"The first thing worth mentioning is that as much electricity is consumed, as much should be produced, and vice versa.
Second, the power grid is a chain of power facilities connected in series. The current flows from the power plant through the substations to the customer via wires. When one of the links stops working, the consumer is disconnected, and a short circuit occurs at the generation facility or substation due to excess electricity. The equipment burns. Therefore, to reduce the risk of overloads, power plants reduce electricity production," said Kovalenko.
He clarified that TPPs/CHPs used to help to quickly manage generation volumes. But the summer shelling hit thermal generation hard, so sometimes we have to maneuver with the help of other facilities that are not really designed for this.
"However, when it comes to an entire power plant and several hours without power or a broken power plant and months of shortages, there is no question. In fact, for the same reason, we could not return the power as quickly as we would have liked. After a power unit is launched, it takes some time to gain power. Unfortunately, this does not happen instantly," Kovalenko added.
He answered the question of whether the lights will now be turned off every time.
"They will shut down as much as necessary. Believe me, no one wants to do this just to annoy people. But as you rightly said, we are at war in our country. So we apologize for the inconvenience," summarized YASNO CEO.
