The Energy Support Fund has managed to raise over EUR410m from 13 partner countries and international organizations as of April 9.
“The remaining amount is the announced contributions, which will soon be transferred by the sponsors,” the Ukrainian Energy Ministry said on Tuesday.
As the ministry noted, the special trust of partners has been secured thanks to the system of transparent distribution of funds. In particular, the Ministry of Energy has a working group on humanitarian aid, which considers requests from Ukrainian energy companies to purchase the necessary aid with the Fund’s resources.
The Fund financed the most urgent needs of Ukrainian energy companies, in particular, the purchase of generators, power transformers, circuit breakers, spare parts, technical means, materials, special equipment, fuel, means of physical protection of energy facilities.
“Most of all funds are distributed to meet the urgent needs of energy companies from frontline regions – Kharkiv, Mykolayiv, Sumy, Zaporizhzhya, Kherson, Odessa,” the Ministry of Energy said.
There is no shortage of electricity in Ukraine, with 19 generating units of thermal power plants in reserve in the energy system, which will be used if necessary, the Energy Ministry said. According to its update in its Telegram channel on Sunday, electricity imports of 425 MWh are forecast for the current day, up a third from Saturday, and exports of 2,300 MWh are expected, down 6% from yesterday’s figure.
At the same time because of the hostilities remain without light, in particular, more than 43 thousand consumers in 75 settlements of Donetsk region, 25.8 thousand consumers in 45 settlements of Kherson region, 15.5 thousand subscribers in 63 settlements of Kharkiv region, 1119 consumers in 17 settlements of Chernihiv region. In Kherson without voltage – 12.6 thousand consumers. In addition, after shelling from the Russian border 1229 consumers in 6 settlements of Sumy region were de-energized. Repair crews will start work as soon as the security situation allows.
There are also blackouts for technological reasons: almost 5 thousand consumers were left without light in Kyiv region, where 2 overhead lines 10 kV were disconnected, more than 400 consumers – in Odessa region, where 10 kV overhead line was disconnected, and 899 consumers in Sumy region.
As noted by the Ministry of Energy, over the day the energy sector energized 10.4 thousand consumers, most of them in Donetsk region – 9.5 thousand subscribers.
Power supply was also resumed to 405 household and 41 legal consumers in five settlements of Mykolayiv region, which were disconnected due to the fall of debris from a downed UAV on an overhead power line.
As for the situation with gas supply, the Energy Ministry once again reports accidents due to improper use of the resource. Thus, in Kryvyi Rih, according to the preliminary version, due to carbon monoxide poisoning, a woman and a man died. In one of the settlements of Brovarsky district of Kyiv region, probably carbon monoxide poisoned three residents of a private house, but they are in satisfactory condition.
In Dnipro, as a result of a traffic accident, a low-pressure gas pipeline was damaged, there was a gas leak, 22 consumers were disconnected from its distribution.
In Lviv, unknown persons shut off the tap at the gas pipeline inlet to an apartment building – gas supply to 123 apartments was cut off.
As a result of shelling damaged gas distribution networks in Kharkiv region, disconnected 6 consumers.
The Ministry of Energy intends to create two industry-specific cyber centers in the electric power and oil and gas sectors on the basis of previously created cyber centers at NPC Ukrenergo and NJSC Naftogaz, Farid Safarov, Deputy Minister of Energy for Digital Development, Digital Transformation and Digitalization, said.
“The Ministry of Energy sent a draft order to the Cabinet of Ministers on the definition of two industry centers. In it, the two cyber centers created on the basis of Naftogaz and Ukrenergo were referred to as industry cyber centers. It is assumed that Ukrenergo will be responsible for the energy sector, for the oil and gas industries – Naftogaz, – Safarov said at an online briefing “Cyber threats in war: cyber attacks on Ukrainian regional energy companies” on Tuesday.
According to him, such proposals were developed as part of an agreement with the National Security and Defense Council and the Security Service of Ukraine, as well as interaction with the government’s CERT-UA computer incident response team.
The Deputy Minister explained that industry cyber centers will be built on the principle of a pyramid.
“At the first level, the enterprises themselves must carry out organizational and technical actions in order to prevent possible damage, above them there is the level of monitoring of industry centers based on Ukrenergo and Naftogaz, which, in turn, are already interacting directly with key cybersecurity stakeholders,” – Safarov explained the mechanism.
In his opinion, the creation of such industry centers will significantly enhance the cyber defense of energy facilities, which are the most vulnerable group of critical infrastructure.
“In order to simplify the work of colleagues from CERT-UA, to coordinate and make their intervention more effective precisely at critical moments, we are building this architecture,” the Deputy Minister noted.
As reported, since the beginning of the war, the number of cyber attacks on energy infrastructure facilities has almost doubled – over 200,000 cyber attacks were committed in 47 days of the war, while 900,000 of them were recorded in the entire 2021.
Electricity consumption in Ukraine in 2021, taking into account in-process losses in networks, increased by 5.7% (by 8.391 billion kWh) compared to 2020 – to 154.826 billion kWh, according to the data of the Ministry of Energy.
According to the calculations of the Interfax-Ukraine agency, excluding technological losses, electricity consumption over the past year increased by 6.4% – up to 125.483 billion kWh.
The country’s industry, excluding technological losses, increased electricity consumption by 6% – up to 52.274 billion kWh. Metallurgical industry consumed 28.873 billion kWh (more 6.4% from 2020), fuel – 3.262 billion kWh (more 0.9%), machine building – 3.522 billion kWh (up 11.3%), chemical and petrochemical – 4.349 billion kWh (up 4.6%), food and processing – 4.405 billion kWh (up 1.5%), construction materials – 2.670 billion kWh (up 14.4%), others – 5.194 billion kWh (up 5%).
In addition, agricultural enterprises consumed 3.692 billion kWh (down 2.8%), transport – 6.171 billion kWh (up 8%), construction – 1.064 billion kWh (up 11.2%).
The country’s population last year consumed 38.659 billion kWh (up 5.8%), household consumers – 15.024 billion kWh (up 5.8%), other non-industrial consumers – 8.599 billion kWh (up 16.5%).
The share of industry in the total electricity consumption in 2021 decreased to 41.7% from 41.8%, and the share of the population – to 30.8% from 31%.
In December 2021, electricity consumption, taking into account technological losses, increased by 1.7% compared to the same month of 2020 – to 15.344 billion kWh, excluding technological losses – by 1.7%, to 11.890 billion kWh.
The Ministry of Energy of Ukraine has terminated the powers of a member of the supervisory board of the National Power Company Ukrenergo – the representative of the state Mykhailo Ilnytsky, having appointed Oleksandr Baraniuk instead.
According to Ukrenergo’s report in the information disclosure system of the National Securities and Stock Market Commission, the order of the Ministry of Energy terminates the powers of Ilnytsky, who was in this position for 28 days. On January 5 of this year, Baraniuk was appointed a member of the Supervisory Board effective from January 6, for a period of three years.
