Ukraine installs secret battery parks to provide power during shelling - WSJ

Massive batteries have been placed in secret locations in Ukraine to maintain power supply in case of Russian attacks. This was reported by The Wall Street Journal .

The battery parks, with a total capacity of 200 megawatts, can provide power for about two hours to approximately 600,000 households. During bombings, this gives engineers time to restore power and prevent blackouts.

The $140 million battery park construction program was completed in August. The project was financed by DTEK and loans from a consortium of Ukrainian banks.

The specific location of the batteries and details of their protection against attacks are not disclosed for security reasons. There are six facilities in Kyiv and Dnipropetrovs'k region.

Julian Nebreda, CEO of the American company Fluence, which supplied the batteries, noted that a minimum of equipment is required to replace each element in the new network, and all of them have fire safety features that "become even more important in the context of Ukraine.".

Although the new network is the largest series of battery parks in Ukraine, it is not the first, the publication reported. In 2021, Vadym Utkin, DTEK's energy storage advisor who is leading the project, oversaw the construction of another such park in Enerhodar, Zaporizhzhia region. A few hours before Russian troops invaded the region, Utkin deleted software from the batteries, turning them into "expensive bricks" that were effectively unusable .

• Russia continued to attack Ukrainian energy facilities in the fall. on October 1, Russia attacked a power facility in Slavutych with drones, which left Chernihiv region without electricity. Fires broke out in Slavutych, and a blackout occurred at the Chornobyl NPP, that lasted more than three hours.
• Chernihiv region will strengthen its air defense systems due to Russia's massive strikes on energy facilities.