Ukrainian producers of electricity from renewable sources (RES) produced 222.6 million kWh in the period from April 5 to April 11, which is 17.2% more than the previous week, while electricity consumption in the country decreased by 0.9%, to 2.86 billion kWh.
According to the recent data of NPC Ukrenergo, the average daily electricity consumption on weekdays compared to the previous week decreased by 0.4% (to 416 million kWh), and on weekends by 2.2% (to 387.4 billion kWh).
Ukrenergo, in order to balance the power system in the face of surplus, on Saturday and Sunday of April 10 and April 11, gave dispatch commands to unload RES generation with a total capacity of 4,341 GW per two days.
“One of the main reasons for this was the decrease in electricity consumption during the specified weekend by 2.2% due to seasonal warming [from plus 5 degrees Celsius, on the weekend of the previous week to plus 8.8 degrees Celsius on April 10],” Ukrenergo said on its website.
According to the company, due to the warming, the volumes of electricity production by solar power plants and wind power plants have also significantly increased during the daytime, which accounts for the “decrease” of consumption. For example, on April 10 at 10:00, the RES capacity was 2.8 GW, while on weekdays in the same week it was 1.3 GW, and on the previous Saturday, April 3 it amounted to 2.1 GW.
“To balance the power system during periods of reduced consumption and at the same time intensive generation at solar and wind power plants, the dispatch center of Ukrenergo issued all possible commands for unloading, including at the request of manufacturers within the balancing market, and all available reserves have been used, except for RES producers. Also, all possibilities for increasing consumption by operating the pumped storage power plant in pumping mode have been exhausted, the limit volumes of imports in the Integrated Power System of Ukraine have been reduced to 0,” Ukrenergo said.
