New heat for the capital. Can Kyiv replace the destroyed thermal power plants?

Kyiv's heating system was on the verge of collapse after devastating strikes on its key elements – three combined heat and power (CHP) plants. These massive generation facilities proved to be too vulnerable to large-scale missile attacks.It is fundamentally impossible to change the situation by the end of this heating season. But the city faces a strategic choice for the winter of 2026/27: to invest resources in restoring damaged thermal power plants or to accelerate the transition to distributed generation. The latter is more expensive and more difficult to implement, but less vulnerable to massive shelling. These scenarios were analyzed by LIGA.netA twofold surplus did not warm KyivIntensified missile strikes on Kyiv's energy infrastructure since late December 2025 led to to large-scale shutdowns of the heating supply. On peak days, over 6,000 apartment buildings were left without heat – almost half of the capital's housing stock.The latest serious strike hit Darnytsia CHP-4, which provides heat to over a thousand buildings. According to Vitaliy Klitschko, head of the Kyiv City State Administration (KCSA), it will take two months to restore it. The condition of the second most powerful CHP plant in Kyiv, the sixth, is currently unknown.At first glance, the problem seems to be a consequence of excessive centralization. But this is only partially true. In addition to the three large thermal power plants, Kyiv has 183 district boiler houses.The city's total thermal capacity is 11.85 GW, while peak consumption is about 6 GW, of which only 4.2 GW is for heating, and the rest is for hot water. The capacity of the three thermal power plants is 5.63 GW, he emphasizes in a comment. LIGA.net Kyrylo Baranchuk, Deputy Director for Scientific and Technical Activities at Danfoss, a Danish manufacturer of thermal equipment.This surplus allows for the redirection of heat supply from some consumers to others. For example, some consumers in the Lisovyi Masyv area were connected to the Voskresenska district boiler house after the shutdown of CHP-6, Baranchuk tells us.However, this scheme does not work throughout the entire city. The reason is the uneven concentration of heat sources and the limited number of hydraulic intersections of heating networks, a Danfoss specialist points out.Late Soviet-era residential areas, particularly Troieshchyna, were designed to be powered by Thermal Power Plant No. 6, and there are virtually no alternative connections there, explains Sviatoslav Pavliuk, executive director of the Association of Energy Efficient Cities of Ukraine.Read alsoFrozen pipes, cold radiators. Can Ukraine keep the heat on under Russian shelling?Could it have been better?Due to the geography of its district heating networks, Kyiv did not have a realistic opportunity to fully compensate for the loss of generation from large combined heat and power plants. But the question is whether the city did enough to diversify its heat sources in advance.Despite criticism from the central government for poor preparation for the heating season, the technical policy of the city operator was generally responsible, according to Igor Petryk, Director of Market Development in Eastern Europe at Wärtsilä Energy. The need for distributed heat sources Kyiv was aware of this even before the full-scale war, both in terms of location and types of fuel, he claims.This was laid down in heat supply scheme Kyiv's Energy Strategy until 2030, developed in 2021 and approved in 2023. The document envisioned the construction and modernization of facilities for 1 GW of electricity and 1.8 GW of heat, including a network of small cogeneration plants using gas and biomass.However, the actual pace is significantly behind schedule. Since 2024, only 15 have been launched in Kyiv. cogeneration units (mini-CHPs). Five of them, with a total capacity of 66 MW, started operating in 2026, although according to previous statements they were supposed to be commissioned in December. In November 2024, was placed The goal is to increase the total capacity of such generation to 170 MW within a year.According to the Director of Market Development in Europe at Wärtsilä Energy, it would have been technically possible to build significantly more new capacity during the years of the full-scale war in Ukraine, but this was hindered by a lack of political will and economic incentives.Read alsoNew generation. How many gas stations have been built in Ukraine and will they help?How to prepare for next winterAfter the attacks on the thermal power plants, Kyiv is forced to choose: to restore large facilities or to accelerate the construction of a network of small cogeneration plants and modular boiler houses in the most vulnerable areas.However, such a task is not only difficult to implement due to numerous obstacles. It is also controversial due to environmental and housing factors, explains Danfoss specialist Kyrylo Baranchuk to LIGA.net.However, a rapid transition to distributed generation has serious limitations. Mini-CHPs create a noise level comparable to a nightclub (110 decibels) and require chimneys to be placed above the roof of the nearest buildings. There is little available space for this due to the density of urban development and the lack of vacant land plots, notes Sviatoslav Pavliuk, executive director of the "Energy Efficient Cities of Ukraine" association.Access to gas is critical for modular boiler houses. For example, the Troieshchyna residential area in the Desnianskyi district is almost entirely built for electricity consumption. The capacity of the existing gas pipelines there will not be enough to connect additional boiler houses and cogeneration units and cover peak heat loads, says Kyrylo Baranchuk from Danfoss.Supplying mobile boiler houses with alternative fuels – biomass, diesel, or coal – also runs into logistical challenges. The energy resource must be delivered to the point of generation, stored in warehouses, protected from potential impacts, and thus incur additional costs.Distributed generation is also more expensive to operate. Specialists must be assigned to each container unit, which, among other things, significantly increases the "cost per gigacalorie" produced by distributed generation, adds Sviatoslav Pavliuk.An additional barrier is the price and availability of equipment. The cost of the main mechanism of a mini-CHP plant – a gas piston unit, without installation and design – will be 600-1000 euros per kW. were evaluated LIGA.net at KTS Engineering. Mayor Vitali Klitschko recently mentioned a similar price level – $1 million per 1 MW of equipment.Even 1 MW containerized stations require months for design, approval, and connection, and full-fledged cogeneration facilities take up to two years to build.But even that is only possible if an agreement can be reached with the manufacturer for the priority production of the units. "Due to the boom in data centers for artificial intelligence, the demand for new power plants has increased many times over. Orders for the supply of main equipment are now being accepted, at best, for the end of 2028," states the Wärtsilä specialist.Danfoss also confirms this. Orders for gas turbines are being placed with a horizon up to 2030, and for large gas piston units – approximately until mid-2028.Therefore, Kyiv will not be able to physically receive large volumes of new cogeneration capacity before the winter of 2026/27.A realistic scenario is the connection of approximately 100–200 MW of total cogeneration capacity, according to Kyrylo Baranchuk from Danfoss.This is more than Kyiv was able to install in the previous year and a half, the specialist admits. But previously, Ukraine lacked practical experience in the mass implementation of small and medium-sized cogeneration units. Today, that experience exists, so there should be fewer problems with their installation, connection to networks, and obtaining the necessary approvals.However, even these volumes will not compensate for the loss of capacity of large combined heat and power plants.That is why the key task for the coming year remains the restoration of damaged thermal power plants, strengthening their protection, and replacing equipment. Partners can help Kyiv with the latter.In some Central and Eastern European countries, particularly Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, equipment from decommissioned or mothballed Soviet-era thermal power plants is still available. "Subject to technical expertise and adaptation," certain elements of such equipment (boilers, turbines, electrical components) can be used for partial restoration or repair of damaged facilities in Kyiv, Danfoss tells us.Gas piston and cogeneration units that can still be imported into Ukraine during the inter-heating season can be installed on the industrial sites of combined heat and power plants.The advantage of this solution is the availability of a developed gas and electrical infrastructure, as well as connection to heating networks. This significantly reduces the scope of construction and installation work and the time required to put the equipment into operation.In parallel, the city should focus on reducing heat loss by repairing main networks, thermally modernizing buildings, and connecting energy-insulated areas to alternative heat sources. However, even these measures do not guarantee a fundamentally higher system resilience.Sviatoslav Pavliuk believes that if the intensity of shelling remains the same as this winter, the 2026-2027 heating season will be accompanied by a heating supply crisis similar to the current one."If I were the head of the HOA in a building in Troieshchyna, I would consider purchasing a small boiler room of my own," says the executive director of the "Energy Efficient Cities of Ukraine" association. Read more about how realistic this option is for co-owners of high-rise buildings in one of the following articles. LIGA.net.Read alsoPreventing pipes from freezing. How much does it cost to equip a house with an individual heating unit?Kyiv's post-war energy systemEven if the situation stabilizes after the war, Kyiv will have to radically revise its district heating model, taking into account the risk of renewed attacks.One option is the phased reconstruction of three capital city thermal power plants. They were built in the USSR, so replacing their turbines and boiler units with more modern counterparts will significantly increase fuel efficiency and the electrical and thermal efficiency ratios.However, this is a capital-intensive and lengthy process, and therefore, according to expert estimates, it will take at least five years, estimates Andriy Berestyany, CEO of the Ukrainian branch of Danfoss.However, the key to sustainability lies not only in production but also in consumption. Up to 45% of heat consumption in Kyiv is lost in main and distribution networks, as well as in the buildings themselves, Danfoss emphasizes.Large-scale thermal modernization can significantly reduce demand and make some of the current capacities redundant, experts interviewed by LIGA.net agree.The Polish experience shows that building modernization should go hand in hand with the transformation of thermal power plants, says Sviatoslav Pavliuk. In Poland, housing was insulated, power plant capacity was reduced, and thermal storage units were implemented simultaneously, allowing for the use of excess heat outside of peak hours."Thanks to this, the boiler house at the thermal power plant, which will be shut down in April, can still distribute hot water before autumn," notes the executive director of the Association of Energy Efficient Cities of Ukraine.Ihor Petryk from Wärtsilä Energy also says that the future of Kyiv's energy system should lie in a gradual phasing out of large generation facilities in favor of relatively small and dispersed heat sources. However, he attributes this not only to military risks but also to economic reasons.In Europe, large combined heat and power plants (CHPs) and thermal power plants (TPPs), as producers of electricity from traditional energy sources, are increasingly losing price competition to renewable energy stations (RES) – solar and wind. The share of the latter continues to increase in the Ukrainian energy system as well.For the economically viable coexistence of heat and power generation with weather-dependent renewable energy sources, a combined approach is used in Europe. During periods of high activity and low electricity prices, electricity is purchased from the sun and wind and supplied for heat production by electric boilers or heat pumps. In the opposite circumstances, small gas piston cogeneration units start operating.Such a configuration of energy sources not only makes the heat supply system more sustainable, but also makes it cheaper.According to Wärtsilä Energy's calculations, in the case of "co-optimization of energy and heat systems," the total cost of electricity and heat production at the Ukraine level should decrease by 10% compared to the baseline scenario of the transmission system operator Ukrenergo, which was cited in its report on the adequacy of generation capacity for 2023 – or by 650 million euros per year.