Ukraine’s price cap increase shortens blackouts, NEURC says

Raising electricity price caps during daytime hours has helped reduce the duration of blackouts by one and a half hours, Yuriy Vlasenko, chairman of the National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission (NEURC), told a Verkhovna Rada session on Wednesday.

The decision to revise the price caps was made in mid-January, following a series of missile and drone attacks by Russia on Ukraine’s power system, which caused both direct physical damage and forced restrictions on the operation of certain types of generation.

"During peak periods, losses of available generating capacity reached up to 40% of the country’s actual electricity consumption. This means that almost half of the demand could not be met by domestic production without relying on emergency reserves, imports, or consumption restrictions. In these conditions, the price increase is an objective economic signal of a resource shortage, not a market malfunction," Vlasenko explained.

He added that domestic challenges were compounded by external factors, namely rising electricity prices in neighboring European Union markets.

"Ukraine effectively faced a deficit in both domestic and foreign markets. The import mechanism alone could not provide full stabilization," he said.

Vlasenko emphasized that the price liberalization in the wholesale electricity market was therefore justified.

"The decision enabled the country to attract additional volumes of imported electricity. In the first ten days of February, Ukraine recorded a historic increase in electricity imports—almost double compared to early January—with daily imports reaching around 50,000 MWh, or nearly 20% of daily consumption. This allowed us to reduce the duration of blackouts for Ukrainian consumers by one and a half shifts," he said.

• According to NEURC, from January 17 to March 30, the maximum price ceiling is set at 15,000 UAH/MWh for the day-ahead and intraday markets and at 16,000 UAH/MWh for the balancing market at all hours.