Ukraine’s government plans to make frontline communites exempt from blackouts

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denis Shmyhal said his government plans to grant exemptions from rotating power outages to communities within a 20-kilometer radius of the Belarus and Russian borders, as well as the frontline regions.

These areas will be added to the priority list that government experts are currently working on. The list will include ‘essential’ customers and critical infrastructure facilities exempt from rolling blackouts.

“Critical infrastructure includes gas, heat, electricity, water supply, and drainage facilities, as well as hospitals. Today, we are also implementing a regulation to prevent power outages in populated areas and facilities within the 20-kilometer zone from the borders with Russia and Belarus, as well as within the 20-kilometer frontline zone,” Shmyhal stated.

Meanwhile, Taras Melnychuk, the government representative in Ukraine’s parliament, revealed that the government has changed power consumption limits.

“Changes have been made to the procedure that determines and applies maximum electricity consumption limits. It aims to improve provisions and ensure priority power supply according to the established minimum load,” he wrote.

The Ministry of Energy is also set to develop new ‘fair’ schedules for rotating power outages. These schedules will include an “equal number of rotating shifts and groups” for all distribution system operators to avoid complaints when some regions have shorter blackouts than others.