Ukraine energy chief counts human cost of Russian war

Boss of DTEK says more than 50 employees have been killed in conflict

The chief executive of Ukrainian energy company DTEK has revealed that 56 of his employees have been killed since the Russian invasion began in February.

Maxim Timchenko said two of the fatalities occurred as “they were working to restore electricity”, while the rest were employees who had joined the army and were killed in action.

A further 120 staff have been injured in the conflict and three remain missing. “We do everything possible to help the families of these people,” said Timchenko.

Speaking from the company’s office in Kyiv during a press briefing with international journalists, Timchenko said DTEK was keeping Ukraine’s energy system in “a stable condition and operation”.

He said the company currently has an average capacity of 10GW average capacity – “about 36% less than it was this time last year”.

He said some 72% of this capacity is nuclear – about 7.2GW – with a further 2.2GW of thermal and about 1.2GW – around 11% - of renewables.

Ukraine joins IEA as Birol talks of energy system ‘built on new relationships’

Timchenko stated that about 90% of wind power and 30% of solar capacity has been knocked out of operation because their locations have fallen into Russian occupied territory.

However, he explained that there were plans to restart construction of wind parks with an ambition of “30 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2030, mostly to export green electricity and green hydrogen to our European partners”.

Latest windpower news

He added that he hoped to see a 50:50 split of renewables and thermal capacity in Ukraine by 2030.

After moves earlier this year with the EU to allow Ukraine to trade energy across European borders, Timchenko explained that Ukraine is now exporting about 100MW of electricity to Slovakia and Romania.

He added that he is expecting this to rise to 200 MW by the end of July and believes it is realistic to expect 600-800MW by the end of this year.

In the week that the European Commission unveiled its strategy to wean countries off Russian gas, Timchenko revealed DTEK’s three-point plan for the winter.

“The first part is to prepare our generation equipment. We have already invested 1.5bn Ukrainian Hryvnia ($40.8 million) in the repairs of power stations.

“The second factor is coal storage: today we have more than 1.5m tonnes of coal in stock and this will be 2.2m tonnes by October 1.”

And thirdly on gas, he said Ukraine currently has around 11.1 bcm in storage. The government has indicated that it would like it to be 19 bcm, however Timchenko said: “Based on our calculations and assumptions, we believe that 15 bcm of gas will be enough.”

Russian invasion marks ‘end of European energy naivety’ says Timchenko

Timchenko confirmed that two weeks ago DTEK had been the target of a cyberattack – and revealed it was the latest in a series.

“It’s not the first one: we have experienced cyberattacks of this level since November last year. But recently they intensified.

“Our corporate IT systems were attacked, however our specialists showed their professionalism because we did not suffer any serious damage nor any confidential information taken and leaked. So it was a good test for our systems.”

Latest Cybersecurity News

He said DTEK had received “great support from Microsoft, supporting us in this fight against hackers”.

He said that three years ago DTEK developed an IT security strategy “and we started the implementation two years ago by our people with the support of different vendors”.

“In today’s attacks we have great support from Microsoft. We work closely with our ministry of energy and our state security and just last week we decided to accelerate the implementation of this IT strategy.”

Electricity trade with Ukraine set for gradual reopening

I asked Timchenko what it was that DTEK and Ukraine needed from the European energy sector.

“Of course we need help,” he said. “We are in a war that is not only a war on the battlefield, it is an economic war and it’s an energy war.

He said DTEK and Ukraine’s ministry of energy had drawn up a 30-40-page document detailing energy hardware and software that they need.

He explained that the list was “mostly related to power distribution companies because this never-ending destruction of equipment needs immediate repairs to restore electricity supply.”

Timchenko added that one of the biggest problems DTEK was facing was a six-to-eight-month lead time to get replacement equipment, “so we try to get priority in production lines of producers”.