From the perspective of protecting critical infrastructure, the situation next winter should be much better, believes former Ukrenergo head (2020–2024) Volodymyr Kudrytskyi. However, he is not as optimistic about building new generation capacities. Why? Volodymyr Kudrytskyi shared his thoughts during a discussion on preparations for the upcoming heating season, held within the joint project of LB.ua and EFI Group “New Country.”
“I do not have access to classified information, but from what I hear, I understand that regarding protection, there is a chance that next winter will be better than this one. Because they are protecting oblast energy substations, transformers at power plants. This is very important. They are protecting elements that do not belong to the energy system: compressor stations that pump gas, pumping groups of key city water utilities, other critical objects, and so on.
That is, from the perspective of protection (I’ll make a prediction because I can unofficially allow myself to do so), it will be better,” Volodymyr Kudrytskyi stated.
But the announced 1.5 GW of new generation for the next heating season will not happen, he is sure.
“Why won’t it happen? Distributed generation is a critically important element for the country’s survival during the war. These are the words of Prime Minister Mrs. Svyrydenko. Just a month and a half ago, we had four outage queues. Then it got warmer, and all the focus that was in February/January on deploying distributed generation faded. And several events occurred.
The first event: operators of these new gas power plants received a notice on March 14 that from March 9, they were not consuming the gas provided at a special price, and for the period — March 9-14 — they must pay a fine because the government made a decision retroactively,” Kudrytskyi noted.
“The second fact. On 30.03, the government, adjusting the previous decision, says that we provide preferential gas to front-line territories, where there are gas-piston gas turbine installations, but only those that were put into operation from December 1, 2025. Those gas-piston installations that operated in November 2025, in October (remember how well everything was?), they are not needed and harmful. Their gas price will be one and a half to two times higher.
And the third fact. From April 1, our energy regulator, in its infinite wisdom, lowers the electricity price at which I have the right to sell the resource produced by the power plant on the market. That is, there is a buyer who wants to pay 7,000 UAH per MWh, there is a seller who can sell for 7,000 UAH. There is a regulator Mr. Vlasenko (Yuriy Vlasenko, head of the NKREKP. — Ed.), who says: ‘5,600 is your maximum. Go into the forest.’ Accordingly, the market gas price against the backdrop of the Iranian crisis and the administrative restriction on the electricity price, on the product produced from this gas,” added Volodymyr Kudrytskyi.
Because of this, according to the former Ukrenergo head, investors building new generation have taken a wait-and-see stance and are now in the project suspension phase. They are waiting to understand what the government plans to do next with electricity and gas prices.
“It’s early April now, deploying this new generation takes 8–10 months. So we can plan the deployment of this new generation, expect it, but the decision about this generation is made not by the prime minister, not the president, not the government, and not a people’s deputy. It is made by the investor,” the expert noted.
He emphasized that just two administrative decisions collapsed imports and stopped already built gas-piston generation.
“I want to highlight this point. There are stories about strategic things, about air defense, and there are stories about two decisions due to which gas generation won’t work tomorrow and there is no import. They are relatively easy to correct. It seems to me that this is an applied story.
… We shouldn’t think that with some local decisions, we can compensate for the 7 GW deficit President Zelensky mentioned this winter. We have a single energy system and two stability factors — increased protection and deployment of new generation. I repeat: I believe that with the first, we will be well off; with the second, there is a huge problem. I very much hope that those administrative decisions that will allow unblocking this process will give us, if not for the next, then at least by the winter after, the possibility to receive these 1.5 GW of additional capacity, without which we will face the same situation as last winter,” Kudrytskyi concluded.
Photo: Zoryana Stelmakh/LB.ua
