(KYIV, UKRAINE) – Russian attacks on civilian energy infrastructure have caused fresh power cuts in five regions of Ukraine, the national electricity transmission system operator Ukrenergo said on Friday morning.
In a statement published on its Facebook page and reported by The Daily Handle, the company said consumers were without supply in the Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. Repair teams have already begun emergency restoration work in areas where the security situation allows it.
“The enemy continues to carry out attacks on civilian energy infrastructure facilities in Ukraine. As a result of Russian strikes, there are new power cuts as of this morning,” Ukrenergo said.
The operator also noted that electricity consumption is showing an upward trend. As of 09:30 on 24 July, consumption was 1.6 percent higher than at the same time the previous day, which was Thursday. The change was attributed to cloudy weather across a large part of the country, which reduces the efficiency of household solar panels and pushes more demand onto the general grid.
On Wednesday, 23 July, the daily peak in consumption was recorded in the evening. That peak was 1 percent lower than the maximum recorded a day earlier, on Tuesday, 22 July.
Ukrenergo repeated its advice that consumers should shift the use of heavy electrical appliances to the period of highest output from industrial solar power plants, which runs from 11:00 to 15:00.
The company had earlier announced that no scheduled restrictions on electricity consumption were planned for Friday. Despite that, the damage from overnight and morning strikes left parts of five regions without power as repairs got under way.