On 27 October 2023, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved the regulation that allows non-household consumers to operate without interruption during power outages, with some exceptions. In other words, in the event of infrastructure damage this winter, imported electricity may be used to avoid supply restrictions.
The regulation provides that if the transmission system operator (i.e., NPC Ukrenergo) is forced to apply a power outage command to consumers due to operational security reasons, the disconnection will not apply to non-household consumers whose total electricity consumption in each billing hour includes at least 30% of purchased imported electricity during May-September and 50% during October-April.
If the percentage of consumption of imported electricity in a billing hour falls below these volumes, NPC Ukrenergo will resume application of a power outage command if necessary.
In critical situations, when NPC Ukrenergo applies special emergency outage schedules, activates special load disconnection automation or automatic frequency unloading devices, outages cannot be avoided, even if a non-household consumer has purchased enough imported electricity.
To buy electricity from the EU, it is also necessary to obtain access to a cross-border crossing. Access to the cross-border crossings can be purchased from the transmission system operator NPC Ukrenergo, which holds auctions for the allocation of cross-border capacity daily.
Currently, the capacity is quite limited. According to recent information from the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine, starting from 1 December, the capacity for importing electricity from the European countries increased from 1.2 GW to 1.7 GW.
By Yaroslav Petrov, Partner, and Olena Sichkovska-Chornobyl, Associate, Asters