Ukraine putting out its begging bowl at the Berlin “Restoration and Infrastructure Conference” this week has led to a smidge more press attention to the impact of Russia’s campaign against Ukraine’s electrical system. Similar to coverage of the war as a whole, bad information is being dribbled out, accompanied by doses of hopium as to how conditions could be made markedly better if the West only provided more weapons, money, and other salves.
Another telling aspect is that the articles are only willing to project out to Ukraine having the high odds of a cold and dark winter, and the impact of that on households. It’s as if we were given old fashioned naval maps, with their warnings at the periphery, “Beyond here lie dragons.” They avert their eyes from the fact that highly constrained power translates into massive constraints on and likely cascading problems with commerce.
Even if you consider only the difficulties for residents, it is not just that they will be in freezing, blackout conditions come winter. What about food? What about getting gas, since many stations rely on electricity to run their pumps?
And when we get to commerce, just start with processing transactions. What happens when Internet access is limited, and retailers and suppliers can’t take card or electronic payments on their merchant systems? Or for that matter, banks if theres is only power for a few hours a day?
And most of all, what about sewage, which John Helmer identified as the big chokepoint in terms of municipalities having a hope of remaining habitable? From his post earlier this week:
Independently of one another, Russian and Ukrainian reporters are confirming the impact of the power losses on the operation of water and sewerage systems in the majority of Ukrainian cities. According to Oleg Popenko, a Ukrainian expert on energy for communal services, “Armageddon has already arrived. We just don’t feel it yet. But the residents of Poltava, for example, feel it, because since May 5 of this year, 120,000 residents of the city receive water by the hour and use sewerage by the hour. You can imagine what happened in Zhitomir when the central sewerage collector didn’t work there for a week, but now in Poltava (it’s been) a month. And this is the problem with water utilities in 70% of Ukrainian cities. Water utilities are probably more important than rest of the infrastructure in the city. Heat and electricity can be replaced somehow, and you can go somewhere. But if the sewer system breaks down in a city, the city is no longer viable in principle.”
Also note that there is some artful positioning on the extent of the devastation. Ukraine’s biggest energy company DTEK confirmed Washington Post reporting. From DTEK on June 7:
In a recent Washington Post article, DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko revealed that russia’s missile attacks have devastated Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, with the country’s largest private power producer losing 86 percent of its generating capacity.
“What makes the situation worse is that many of the electrical facilities have been targeted repeatedly — a cycle of destruction, recovery, destruction,” Timchenko told the Washington Post. He pointed to one DTEK power unit that was repaired just weeks ago only to be struck again over the weekend, saying “Now it’s just gone.”
Yet various new reports state that Ukraine has lost only 50% of its generation. This is plausible given that DTEK in 2019 and 2020 supplied only 18% to 19% of Ukraine’s electricity, per Fitch. So the math could work. But 86% for DTEK versus 50% overall would mean DTEK has been singularly unlucky. So it’s not unreasonable to think that 50% is an understatement.
BBC provided one Ukraine electricity update this week. The Twitterverse amplified this section:
If Russia continues to attack power plants, the worst-case scenario is that come winter Ukrainians could be spending up to 20 hours a day without power and heating, according to Ukraine’s largest private energy company DTEK. Part of the issue is that Ukraine’s thermal and hydroelectric power stations are difficult and expensive to fix.
They skipped over the significance of this part:
Ukraine is buying energy from the European Union to try to cover its shortfall. Its energy ministry said it was planning on Wednesday to import its largest amount of power to date. However, this is not enough to make up its deficit, meaning nationwide power cuts have been planned during an eight-hour window, from 3pm to 11pm, in order to protect critical infrastructure such a hospitals and military facilities.
The BBC piece made it sound as if 3 PM to 11 PM power outages are the new normal (although in fairness “power cuts” could mean rolling blackouts in this window). Anyone who has read about load balancing in connection with solar power knows that residential usage peaks when people come home from work. They cook dinner (and open their fridges, also increasing power demand), turn on lights, turn on air conditioning or turn up heat, depending on the time of year, and in normal circumstances, many turn on entertainment devices.
So this window is part of the business day and the most active time for households. In the US, the consumer sector is the largest user of electricity, but represents less than half the total (commercial and industrial are classified separately). Ukraine is probably not wildly different (it probably has a larger industrial sector, but that was concentrated in the Donbass, which Russia now deems to be part of Russia). So even though the outage time is only 8 hours a day, on a guesstimated basis, it seems consistent with a 50% reduction. But when you consider the profile, it already represents a lot of pain for individuals.
A new story in the Wall Street Journal applies as much porcine maquillage as possible to this dire and worsening situation. Key extracts:
Ukraine is imposing blackouts, launching hasty repairs and hunting for spare parts after a Russian bombing campaign targeting power infrastructure in recent months slashed the country’s electricity production by half.
The Russian attacks, using waves of missiles and explosive drones, have sparked fears of a painful winter should the power outages severely hamper the economy and lead to an exodus from cities. Ukraine has long pleaded with the West for more air-defense systems, and Ukrainian officials say deliveries have been insufficient to protect both cities and the front lines.
In reviving and expanding a tactic used earlier in the war, Ukrainian officials say Russia is seeking to spark a humanitarian crisis as part of an effort to break Ukrainians’ will to fight and force a capitulation.
The streets of Kyiv are already filled with the sound and fumes of generators, as power companies impose hourslong blackouts to manage consumption and carry out repairs. Ukraine has increased electricity imports from European Union neighbors it was exporting power to as recently as March. And repair crews are working across its energy grid to restore capacity, sometimes only to see the same facilities struck again.
This section implies, and more Ukraine complaints in the article later explicitly claim, that this campaign could be neutralized if the West provided more air defenses. While technically accurate, it breezes past the fact that that’s na ga happen. Ukraine’s former Soviet weaponry generally outperformed Western replacements. As anyone who has been even dimly following this story knows, the US and NATO have been scrounging to find more Patriot missiles, even as Russia has been successfully hunting and destroying the platforms. Ukraine has also been pinning far too much hope on the eventual delivery of F-16 fighter jets, which the Anglosphere media has dutifully also overhyped. And we see no mention of ever-more effective Russian signal jamming.
It’s not surprising to see frustration and upset on Twitter:
Once again… we’ve a Full House. Ukraine is being pummeled. Air defense is as scarce as electricity. pic.twitter.com/jsV35z8CgX
— ₦₳V𝚜𝚝é𝚟𝚊 🇷🇺 ᴢ (@Navsteva) June 14, 2024
🇺🇦💡 ALL THERMAL POWER PLANTS IN UKRAINE HAVE BEEN DAMAGED OR DESTROYED, THEIR SHARE IN ELECTRICITY GENERATION REDUCED TO 5% – UKRENERGO
▪️ The hydropower sector also suffered losses: 2 HPPs are completely out of operation. pic.twitter.com/3ACnTm1MNX
— Malcolm X (@malcolmx653459) June 13, 2024
The Journal piece turns to the notion that Ukraine can restore service as the war is on, which is akin to bailing water out of a badly leaking boat:
DTEK estimates the price of restoring the energy system at $50 billion…Focused on maintenance, they are looking for spare parts, equipment and investment to keep Ukraine’s grid working. To address the need for parts, (Maxim) Timchenko (CEO of DTEK) said DTEK has been working with countries across Europe to visit decommissioned power plants to scour for usable parts. At least 10 countries have opened their doors.
During the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Berlin, Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said it helped coordinate a dozen new cooperation agreements for rebuilding and maintaining the country’s power grid. State power company Ukrenergo said it has received 30.4 million euros, equivalent to around $33 million, from Germany to support energy infrastructure. The EU said 1.4 billion euros in grants will be available to businesses working in the sector. DTEK announced partnerships with U.S. energy companies Honeywell International and GE Vernova as well as French energy company Schneider Electric, which has donated 43,000 pieces of emergency equipment worth 4 million euros since February 2022.
In fairness, the article does acknowledge, as minimally as possible, that energy facilities are “sometimes” destroyed again after repairs.
The Journal describes Ukraine plans to rely more on solar and other distributed generation, with DTEK having launched a new wind farm even while the war was on. But the article also describes the use of generators as a stopgap, without acknowledging that they are not a viable ongoing solution. Again hoisting from Helmer:
On June 7, a video recorded stroll down one of Odessa’s shopping streets revealed an emergency generating set providing electricity for almost all of the commercial establishments.
“This is in no way sustainable,” comments a NATO military engineer. “Note how each shop has its own genset. The generators in the video are not designed for the duty cycle they’re being run at. They’ll wear out soon enough. The military, including deployed NATO personnel, use the shops and the gensets, too. The idea of pooling their resources, sharing load among gensets, thus reducing wear and tear on the whole network, while collectivizing fuel and maintenance costs, doesn’t seem to have occurred to them. To be sure, what follows will be no lack of electrocutions, carbon monoxide poisonings, and fires. We can bet the manifestations of the social pathology we’re seeing here have been factored in by the General Staff. Their attack point will now be to stop fuel, engine oil, spares, and replacements from getting through.”
Russia is working on two overlapping tracks, that of degrading Ukraine’s power system so severely as to cripple its military’s ability to supply itself and communicate, with the ancillary effect of getting civilians to leave cities, which would give Russia more degrees of freedom in taking them, if it has to resort to offensive operations. At the same time, it is relentlessly attriting Ukraine’s men and weapons in the east. Russia can decide how to manage the tempo of each campaign. It will be interesting to see which vector Russia prefers over time, since this may also give early signals as to how Russia is thinking about the end game. For instance, more emphasis on the electrical campaign could presage Russia eventually asserting control over western Ukraine, which they would regard as an unwelcome necessity. Consistent with that notion, John Mearshimer on Judge Napolitano pointed out yesterday (starting at 8:58):
Ukrainians needs more manpower on the battlefield, they need more weaponry, and we don’t have weaponry to give them in meaningful numbers, and we certainly don’t have any manpower to give them. So there is not much we can do at this point in time. And I would argue, by the way, that by doubling down the way we are doubling down, especially by giving Ukraine a 10 year military commitment, we’re just guaranteeing that Russians have a powerful incentive to really wreck Ukraine.
Mearshimer did at least disagree with Gilbert Doctorow and said he thought Russia would not flatten Kiev. But that view does not make the overall trajectory that much better.
