120 days – roughly four months: That’s how much time Maxim Timchenko reckons Ukraine has until cold weather sets in, raising the pressure on Ukraine’s crippled power infrastructure. Timchenko is CEO of the country’s largest private energy operator, DTEK, which has lost power plants in recent Russian attacks – part of a Russian offensive that has wiped out half of Ukraine’s power production. He tells Steven Beardsley how he’s now trying to scrape together every bit of generating capacity he can find, including from renewables.
Does Ukraine have any “prosummer” type legislation (i.e. allowing people that are producing energy via their own means - generally solar - and sending it back into the grid to have their bills cut/be paid) in force? I think this will incentivize some people to install these solar panels where possible, so the power supply can be decentralized.
I have no idea, just want to note that those usual “balcony power plant” kits would be rather infuriating: If they don’t see any power from the net they think they’re unplugged and thus don’t provide any power, that is, they can’t be used to bridge outages. That’s very important safety-wise, not only would they expose 230V at their power plug if they didn’t act like that, it’s also very problematic when consumers feed electricity back into the net when the net is down because people might be working on it. There might be some models with separate outlets you can use when the power is down but it’s definitely not going to feed your home grid. It’s also not going to work at night so you probably want a battery backup system with such a function.
It’s also possible to have a switch-over system where your home grid gets isolated from the main grid when the main grid is out and you only feed your own home, and such systems are available off the shelf, OTOH now you definitely want an electrician to do the installation. And even with Slav YOLO attitude it’s still going to be more pricey.
On the upside, though, all those small inverters following network frequency electronically have a stabilising effect on the network that shouldn’t be underestimated, making it much more capable of staying up while large loads get connected or disconnected.
@barsoap I see. Thank you!
Yup, they’re called grid tie inverters, because they tie a into the grid. They’re not able to be a standalone power supply, and you typically need a battery bank to be able to do so.
They will happily help out a generator though.