The connection had been under study for five years and is now a reality. Russia’s war on Ukraine has accelerated the timetable.
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Before the war, the Ukrainian power grid was synchronized with Russia. Since the outbreak of the conflict, this network has operated in isolation. Since Thursday March 17, it is technically attached to Europe. In other words, all the production machines operate on the same pulse between all the major European capitals and kyiv.
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The system is based on the principle of solidarity through a European consortium called Entso-E. The latter brings together nearly 40 national electricity networks connected to each other and can supply some 400 million consumers. It is this network that Ukraine joined on Thursday March 17 under the accelerated procedure. In the end, the mesh makes it possible to reinforce the solidity between the national networks and to avoid cuts. It takes into account and pools all the energy sources of the various member countries (mainly nuclear sources, but also solar and wind).
Until now, the country besieged by Russia risked a collapse of its network in the event of loss of the means of production. You should know that Ukraine is independent in terms of energy: it has an annual production capacity of 50 gigawatts for a traditional consumption that does not exceed 25 gigawatts. Apart from the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant which fell into Russian hands, the entire national electricity grid is still controlled by the Ukrainians.
The objective of the consortium is not to exchange or sell electricity between the different countries but to reinforce the robustness of the networks while removing the collateral risks. This technical solidarity to which the Russians have never had access, we owe it in particular to RTE, the manager of the French electricity network which participated in setting up the consortium in question at the end of the 2000s.