There are no illusions about the following winter in Ukraine: the Russians will attack energy facilities, so the government is already implementing a plan to protect the energy industry. Some points of the developed approach are innovative and unique because similar circumstances have not yet existed in the world. This winter, they will be used in Ukraine for the first time.
Unique solutions in unique conditions
The chairman of the board of NPC Ukrenergo Kudrytskyi spoke about guaranteeing the safety of energy facilities. The plan was developed considering the fact that the infrastructure of any country in the world has not known such a level of threat in recent decades.
It is built based on several principal factors:
1. No one can predict exactly which objects and in what number will be attacked; it can happen in any region or several regions.
2. Repairs must be carried out urgently and extensively to restore the operation of the entire system.
Based on past events, we can conclude that the enemy tried to disable the energy systems that supply electricity to large cities in the first place because this is the way to annoy as many Ukrainian civilians as possible.
Two types of protection
The security system, which was developed for the next heating season, consists of two main components:
– Active protection. These are air defense systems that will “cover” the operation of energy facilities.
– Passive methods. These are special engineering structures that will reduce destruction during attacks.
Details are not disclosed for obvious reasons, but experts call them very innovative.
All these innovations were comprehensively implemented with the close cooperation of three institutions:
– Ukrenergo;
– government bodies;
– General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Currently, the energy system can operate in the winter without blackouts, but no one knows the extent of the attacks that Russia is planning. The possibility of fan or emergency blackouts will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Most likely, we will have to resort to importing electricity from Europe.
Live up to the heat
Also, a significant part of the objects is now equipped with generators of various capacities. This especially applies to hospitals and other essential places of critical infrastructure.
So, the Ukrainian system was prepared much better than last year. However, do not rely only on this and relax because Russia also prepared attacks more carefully. Time will tell whose training was more effective.
