Kim promised that turning off the lights will not affect the heating season in the Mykolaiv region: «If there are no accidents»

Deputy Prime Minister-Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories Iryna Vereshchuk and the head of Mykolayiv RMA Vitalii Kim. Photo: «NykVesty"

Vitalii Kim, the head of the Mykolaiv Oblast, stated that the power outages will not have any effect on the upcoming 2024-2025 heating season in the Mykolaiv region.

He announced this during a visit to Mykolaiv by Iryna Vereshchuk, the Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories, on July 23, NikVesti reports.

According to him, in case of power outages, the boiler rooms of the utility company «Mykolaivoblteploenergo» are equipped with backup power sources.

«As for the CHP, it independently generates electricity and also gives surpluses to the system, which is about 30% of consumers. As for Mykolaivoblteploenergo, I could be wrong, but all 79 boiler houses have backup power,» said Vitaly Kim.

He noted that if there are no accidents in the heating network, Mykolaiv Oblast will enter the heating season on time.

«That is, there will be no questions about heating, if there are no accidents. We have provided everything necessary, so if there are no accidents, everything will be on time. When there is no light, heat will be provided,» noted the head of the RMA.

We will remind that the Deputy Prime Minister-Minister of Ukraine for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories, Iryna Vereshchuk, is sure that Mykolaiv Oblast will enter the upcoming 2024-2025 heating season without any problems. She positively assessed the level of preparation of the region for the winter period.

Shelling of the energy industry in the spring of 2024

On March 22, Russia carried out the first massive shelling of energy infrastructure facilities this year. The Russian army attacked Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kryvyi Rih, Khmelnytskyi, Poltava Oblast, Vinnytsia Oblast, Lviv Oblast, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Mykolaiv Oblast, Odesa and other regions of Ukraine.

The biggest was the attack on the Dnipro hydroelectric power plant (HPP) in Zaporizhzhia. This is one of the largest and most powerful hydraulic structures in Ukraine. A rocket attack on the Dnipro HPP resulted in damage to two stations and a dam that are part of its structure.

Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Research Center, says that by winter, Ukraine needs to restore at least 25-30% of the damaged heat generation: «We need to fully involve imports. Also, before winter, we need to restore as much as possible from coal generation, from hydro generation, and to build facilities in gas generation as much as possible.»

At the same time, according to the Minister of Energy Herman Halushchenko, it is not appropriate to make any predictions about the difficulty of the next winter for the energy industry of Ukraine. In his opinion, now no one will be able to say with which generation Ukraine will end up in the winter: «Actually, everything looks comforting, because the system, despite the Russian strikes, is intact.»

The BBC predicts that Ukrainians can spend up to 20 hours a day without electricity or heating in winter.

How the Nikolaev CHP failed the heating season in 2023

The 2023-24 heating season in Mykolaiv began on November 14, but Mykolaiv CHP was able to provide heat to residents only at the beginning of December due to numerous accidents on heating networks. The mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkevych, believes that the problems with starting heat will only get worse in the coming years.

After the disruption of the heating season and statements by the Mykolayiv RMA about the need for personnel decisions, the CHP began an official investigation to find the culprits.

As of the evening of November 18, 2023, Mykolaiv CHP connected only half of the total number of its consumers in Mykolaiv to heat. At the same time, in September, the CHP reported that it was 92% ready for the start of the heating season.

As of the evening of November 20, dozens of apartment buildings remained without heating in Mykolaiv. In several districts of the city, repair works of heating networks continued. Then the first deputy of Mykolaiv city mayor Vitalii Lukov announced that they plan to connect all residential buildings of Mykolaiv to heat in a few days.

However, on the evening of November 21, there were still more than 400 apartment buildings in the city without heating. The Mykolaiv thermal power plant said that delays in the supply of heat to multi-apartment buildings occurred due to large gusts on the main pipelines of the heating lines.

On November 30, the CHP reported that due to emergency work in three more areas of the city, residents will again be left without heating for some time. However, the company immediately announced the good news — according to forecasters, the weather conditions in Mykolaiv are expected to improve.

Numerous gusts of CHP networks are connected, in particular, with the fact that last heating season the enterprise used salty water from the estuary, which accelerates the corrosion of already outdated pipes. In contrast to this, purified water from wells was poured into «Mykolaivvoblteploenergo», which NikVesti wrote in the article «Winter is near: What will the heating season be like in Mykolaiv?». Thus, the start of both heating seasons began without disruptions and significant accidents in the houses served by the regional heat and power utility.

At the same time, the Mykolaiv Thermal Power Plant reported that during the 2023/2024 heating season, water from the estuary will be poured in only in emergency cases. Thus, the networks of the enterprise are filled with salt water by 8%, while last year the systems were filled with estuarine water by 91%.

For six months now, the Mykolaiv TPP has not brought Mariupolska (Moskovska) Street from Tsentralnoy Avenue to Chkalov, where repair work was carried out on heating networks last fall, into order. The Mykolaiv CHP says that it makes no sense to asphalt the excavated sections of the road along Mariupolska Street, because in a few months there will be a partial replacement of the heating line there. The network section should be replaced from Dunayeva Street to Sevastopolskaya Street. Similar works will be carried out in the areas along Pogranichnaya street.

We will remind you that the director of Mykolaiv Thermal Power Plant (TPP) Dmytro Myroshnychenko submitted a declaration on property and income for 2023. During the year, the official earned 2 million 143 thousand 897 hryvnias. On average, the salary of an official was 178 thousand hryvnias per month (about 4.5 thousand US dollars).

In addition, the Mykolaiv District Administrative Court will consider the case based on the lawsuit filed by the journalist of the online media «Nikvesti» against the Mykolaiv Thermal Power Plant (TPP), which refused to provide information about the salaries of the management during 2023.