«Everything is fine, there is light»: the mayor of Zhytomyr told how the city manages to be energy independent

Mayor of Zhytomyr Serhii Sukhomlin in Berlin. Photo: NikVesti

The mayor of Zhytomyr Serhii Sukhomlin spoke about the state of the energy system in the city and how local authorities manage to avoid long-term blackouts.

Serhii Sukhomlin told the NikVesti journalist about this during the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2024, held in Berlin on June 11-12.

The mayor recalled that in 2022-2023, when emergency shutdowns were first used throughout Ukraine due to Russian attacks on the power system, there were almost no shutdowns in Zhytomyr. A similar situation persists in the region even now.

According to him, the number of outages was minimized thanks to the work of «green energy», the modernization of utility companies and the timely transition to LED lighting in the city.

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«Everything is fine with us, there is light. We, like everyone else, have our limits, they are strict. But if we take the lighting in Zhytomyr, we replaced everything with LED back in 2017-2018, and if we use it in economical mode, it is 360 KW for the whole city,» said Serhii Sukhomlin.

He added that in Zhytomyr Oblast «at one time» a large-capacity solar power plant was built, which now enables the region not to go beyond the limits.

Also, during the last six years in Zhytomyr, they have been engaged in the modernization of utility companies, which also helps to reduce the stress on the power system.

«A thermal power plant was built, which provides heat and electricity with the money of Switzerland and budget funds, and several private boiler houses of large capacity. Solar power plants are currently being built at the local water supply company for the company's facilities,» he explained.

According to the mayor, thanks to the help of USAID, two gas piston machines were installed in the city. The mayor hopes that by the end of this year, these machines will be able to launch an additional 33 MW of capacity.

«That's why we have more or less the situation,» emphasized Serhii Sukhomlin.

The mayor of Zhytomyr shared that during the conference he and Ukrenergo presented the project for the construction of a waste incineration plant.

«I think that this will be the first project in Ukraine, because during the war, we launched a waste processing plant. It was opened (in Zhytomyr, — note) sometime in April 2022,» he said.

Shelling of the energy sector 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 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.

Power outage in Mykolayiv Oblast

Power outages across Ukraine returned in mid-May. The main reason for this is the resumption of large-scale shelling of the energy industry by the Russians, which destroyed 9.2 GW of Ukrainian generation over the past three months. The government explained that the outages will last until August-September. And in winter, a deficit in the energy system is predicted even at high temperatures.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that the Ministry of Energy and «Ukrenergo» should develop a resolution that would regulate «fair schedules of turning off the lights for consumers.»

In Mykolaiv and the region, outages occur according to the queues to which the region is divided according to the «Mykolaivoblenergo» schedule — there are 6 of them in total. The list of addresses by queues can be viewed at the link.

Also, «Mykolaivoblenergo» presented a search system that should help consumers more easily navigate schedules and power outages.

It is also worth noting that almost all this time the lights were turned off according to hourly schedules for 2 hours in a row, however, on June 4 , special emergency shutdown schedules were introduced in Mykolaiv and the region. Consumers were without light for 5-6 hours.

Trams and trolleybuses may not work for hours in Mykolaiv due to the lack of electricity supply. The head of the Mykolaiv regional administration, Vitalii Kim, previously stated that the situation with the Ukrainian energy system is bad, but its condition should improve.

A solar power plant was put into operation at the «Water Supply of the City of Voznesensk» enterprise. The management of the enterprise says that it helps to contain the increase in the cost of the service for the public.