DTEK Energy company is convinced that it is necessary to analyse the root causes behind the crisis on Ukrainian electricity market. The company approves any initiatives aimed at finding the true causes behind the situation in the energy sector.
At the same time, political statements were spread in the Ukrainian media regarding alleged complaint to the Anti-Trust Committee of Ukraine, which is aimed solely at discrediting a particular market player. Media reports are backed up with direct accusations of alleged “artificial power scarcity” and “a situation that threatens power outages.” Such statements are politically biased by their nature and are totally manipulative. Their purpose is to relay responsibility for the crisis in the industry on the particular market player. The company calls on reputable Ukrainian media to maintain information hygiene and not to play up to politically motivated organizations.
- In turn, DTEK reaffirms that the energy sector finds itself in a profound crisis, which is causing growing debt in the energy system, reducing costs for repairs and investments into basic equipment of all types of generation throughout Ukraine. As a result, there is an increase in the number of accidents and a decrease in reliability of the nation’s energy supply.
- The current crisis on the electricity market is a consequence of fundamental economic mistakes in terms of administrative intervention in pricing and distortion of European regulatory principles committed during 2019-2021.
- The financial deficit within the industry since the launch of new market model in 2019 already exceeds UAH 50 bln. This is twice as much as the debt of old market model, which has accumulated UAH 27 bln in debt over the ten years of its existence.
- Despite this extremely critical situation in the industry, DTEK Energy’s thermal generation has been operating the complete scope of its equipment for several months already in response to the energy system’s need for shunting capacity. Thermal generation was forced to work beyond the forecast balance of the Ministry of Energy, because nuclear power generating units did not complete the overhauls on time and went on the emergency overhaul in the heat of the autumn and winter period. This was the key reason for considerable reduction in coal stocks at the TPPs in January.
- The deliverables of coal production and, consequently, supplying the warehouses at TPPs were also negatively affected by the temporary downtime of mines in the first half of 2020 due to the lack of demand for Ukrainian coal and its replacement by electricity imports from Russia and Belarus.
- Despite these circumstances, in the midst of the heating season, DTEK supplied some 450,000 tons of coal to the state-owned Centerenergo to support operation of the state-owned generation and prevent it from shut-down.
- Even in the crisis industrial conditions, DTEK Energy mines continue producing coal, which is intended for thermal generation, at full capacity. Since 1 January 2021, DTEK Energy miners have extracted 1.8 mln tons of gas-grade coal.
- Due to considerable need for heat generation during the cold season, the company arranged the search for additional sources of supplying coal to TPPs. In order to compensate for the shortage of gas coal and to ensure stable operation of the energy system, the company began importing coal from Kazakhstan and Poland.