11 May 2017, Thursday, 15:21 81

Cabinet Extends State Of Emergency In Energy Sector For Another Month

Редактор: Daria Zubkova

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has extended the state of emergency in the energy sector for another month.

The Cabinet of Ministers endorsed this decision at its sitting on Thursday, Ukrainian News Agency reports.

The state of emergency in the energy sector has been in place since February 17, 2017, imposed after full halt of shipment of anthracite coal from the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions currently beyond the control by the Government of Ukraine.

This is the third extension of the state of emergency in the energy sector by the cabinet headed by Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman.

The state of emergency in the energy sector means to end-users possible (if necessary) temporary blackouts (so-called rolling blackouts) that the central controller of the power grid system is authorized to allow in case of power deficit in the system.

From the commercial point of view, the emergency means that the energy system is hand-controlled and price bids for power generation will not be accepted.

On the other hand, the state of emergency grants greater authorities to the Ukrenergo national energy company, the central controller of the power grid system, who thus has received the right to hand-manage power output of each thermal power plant.

In addition, under the emergency conditions, a heat generating hot pool minimum level (must be maintained at nuclear power plants for rapid power compensation in case of nuclear power unit emergency shutdown) is allowed to be reduced from 1,000 MW to 500 MW.

The state of emergency also means to nuclear power units switching into the weekly maneuvering mode (partial offloading of the system on Fridays and bouncing back into the full capacity on Mondays).

These measures are intended to reduce consumption of anthracite coal, deliveries of which to thermal power plants stopped on February 13 a result of the blocking of railway traffic across the line of contact.

According to the Energy and Coal Industry Ministry, the temporary emergency measures will allow the country to save between 300,000 and 350,000 tons of anthracite coal per month (the daily consumption of anthracite coal at thermoelectric power plants was about 30,000 tons).

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, on February 13, 2017, there are no supplies of anthracite coal from coalmines located the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions currently beyond the control by the Government of Ukraine to thermal power plants located on the territories controlled by the Government of Ukraine (except for Luhansk TPP).

In May 2017, the DTEK Energy holding company began delivering anthracite coal to the Prydneprovskaya and Kryvyi Rih thermal power plants (both located in the Dnipropetrovsk region) from its coal mines in the Rostov region of Russia.

Больше новостей о: Cabinet of Ministers energy sector state of emergency