Critical infrastructure in western Ukraine faces blackouts as deficit grows

By BBC Monitoring

The national power grid operator has introduced a special mode of power outages which allows for power cuts to some critical infrastructure facilities in Ukraine's western Lviv Region as electricity shortage reached almost 50% of the need, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported, quoting the regional administration head, Maksym Kozytskyy, as saying.

The special schedule for emergency outages took effect as of 1130 gmt 23 January, he said.

The schedule is applied as a special measure based on the national energy company Ukrenerho's instructions when other measures to stabilise the energy system, scheduled blackouts and emergency blackouts, appear to be ineffective.

Local authorities do not warn consumers of the special emergency blackouts because it takes only three minutes between the issuing of Ukrenerho's instruction and its implementation.

The main reasons behind the electricity shortage in the region are the lowering ambient temperature and increased consumption during business hours, the report said.

Source: Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kyiv, in Russian 1449 gmt 23 Jan 23