OREANDA-NEWS. The power engineers of DTEK Luganskaya TPP and Ukrenergo national energy company managed to make the complex power supply switching to prevent a total power outage of Lugansk and Donetsk oblasts.

A complete energy collapse threatened Donbass as the military operations had damaged the high-voltage power lines and cut off electricity supply to two thirds of electric power consumers in Lugansk Oblast. Luganskaya TPP operating under Rinat Akhmetov's DTEK energy holding picked up the extra load not to let another one third of consumers, including big industrial companies with hazardous production, be cut off from electricity. The power engineers managed to stabilise the situation but they need to restore the power lines damaged by the shelling. This will become possible only if the fighting stops in Donbass.

At 12:30 the military operations in Lugansk and Donetsk oblasts damaged two 220 kV high-voltage backbone power transmission lines owned by Ukrenergo NEC, while a 330 kV power line had been damaged earlier. As a result, DTEK Luganskaya TPP was automatically switched off from the integrated power system of Ukraine and started operating as a balanced load. It means that DTEK Luganskaya TPP accounted for electricity supply of the whole Lugansk region. To ensure stable electric network operations, DTEK and Ukrenergo power engineers had to make the complex and unique power switching and adjust operations of power-generating units. They had practised this type of works during drills but never done it since the Soviet times. Thus, their efforts helped to prevent a total power outage of the electric power plant.

From 12:30 to 17:32 DTEK Luganskaya TPP controlled the current frequency of the electric grid. Before the power failure, the current frequency stability was ensured by all energy producers in the integrated power system on a control engineer command. As DTEK has been introducing automatic equipment and upgrading the power generating units of Luganskaya TPP over the last year, it managed to reconnect TPP to the integrated power system of Ukraine at 17:32.

DTEK Luganskaya TPP is over 50 years old and is operating at the limit of its capacity. On 7 July, a bridge near the power plant was blown up. It was used for transporting coal to generate electricity. The coal reserves will only last for twenty days if the plant continues to carry the whole load and use three power generating units.

With 400 MW of electric potential, DTEK Luganskaya TPP will maintain the required electricity supply of one third of big industrial companies in Lugansk Oblast. The shutdown of these plants may threaten the region with major man-made environmental disasters. The blackouts have affected the mines in the first place: some of them stopped ventilating and pumping out underground water. The miners were evacuated to the surface. The plants operating in Donetsk Oblast have been also affected by the power failure. Given the risk of industrial accidents at the de-energised companies, the life in the region literally depends on the power engineers.

Ukrenergo NEC works to restore the high-voltage power transmission lines as soon as possible. However, to do it, the military operations in Donbass have to stop. Donbass needs PEACE.