Power outage for 20 hours? An expert shared insights on last winter's miracle and provided a forecast for Ukraine.

This heating season, Ukraine will face extremely challenging conditions. The enemy's attacks on the energy system continue unabated, and the pace of recovery is unable to keep up with the destruction.

How events might unfold as a result was explained to "Telegraph" by expert from the Institute of Energy Strategies Yuriy Korolchuk.

This week, Russian forces launched another targeted strike on Ukraine's energy system (including power plants and substations in the transmission system), leading to emergency outages. Experts agree that continuous outages are inevitable, but they have differing opinions on their potential duration. The range is from 4-6 hours to 12-20 hours in the worst-case scenario.

- The problematic and weak point in this heating season is currently electricity, because there is also gas and other aspects, — emphasized Yuriy Korolchuk, head of the Institute of Energy Strategies, in a conversation with our publication. – Last year, with a relatively mild winter and mostly operational thermal power plants (TPPs), the system managed relatively well. We miraculously passed through two cold spells – in early December and early January. In this case, I refer to the words of the chief dispatcher of "Ukrenergo," Vitaliy Zaychenko, who noted that we were helped by God and nature. Additionally, hydropower plants played a colossal role last year and the year before in avoiding prolonged outages, as they were able to store more water (this refers to pumping water into the upper reservoir at hydropower plants during periods of low electricity demand; when consumption rises, the water is released into the lower reservoir through turbines, and the generated electricity is fed into the energy system – Ed.)

But if this season we experience prolonged and severe cold, and TPPs have sustained significant damage, how will we cope? Certainly, with outages. Last week, there was already a stir due to Ukrenergo's introduction of restrictions for businesses and industries. This occurred while negotiating consumption volumes. In other words, energy providers know that someone consumes 1 million kW and suggest reducing that figure to 800 thousand kW during peak evening hours. Of course, I am citing hypothetical figures. So, there have already been restrictions, plus the weather has remained relatively warm, so we have not yet felt a significant difference. But when the cold sets in, the picture will change.

We can certainly hope for additional restrictions for large consumers – businesses and industries, which will have their consequences. Likewise, there can be calls for conservation at the household level – a favorite narrative of "Ukrenergo" – which is also possible. People can indeed do this, but it isn't that cold yet, homes have not yet frozen, so people haven't begun to experience discomfort and haven't started using additional heating devices.

Ultimately, everything will depend on what is operational in the energy system, what can be mobilized, and in what volumes. For instance, we don't know how many reactor blocks at nuclear power plants will be operational. We have all seen what happens when several are taken offline simultaneously, as occurred in July of this year during scheduled repairs. These resulted in prolonged outages. Furthermore, everything hinges on the technical condition of both nuclear and thermal power plant blocks. Similarly, hydropower plants, which played a significant role last heating season, have also suffered since then and therefore cannot operate at full capacity. Hence, these assumptions about 12, or even 20-hour outages – all of this could come to fruition. Of course, one could scoff or laugh at this, but there are objective factors at play.

Additionally, there are ongoing missile strikes that cannot be ignored. If, God forbid, there are any further serious damages, it will certainly have a significant impact. Therefore, it can be stated that the overall situation is undoubtedly more tense than last year, – concluded the expert.

As reported by "Telegraph," energy is one of the points in the Plan for resilience presented by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on November 19 in the Verkhovna Rada. However, the specific measures being discussed are still unknown.