Ukrainians will experience new power outages: an expert explains the benefits of dividing the grid into zones.

Oleg Popenko, an expert in the housing and utilities sector, believes that changing the electricity outage schedules for Ukrainians is a logical solution that will facilitate a more balanced supply of electricity to consumers. He stated this in a comment for TCH.ua.

The specialist emphasizes that the division into zones regarding electricity has already effectively existed, as Ukraine is largely dependent "on electricity supplies across certain directions and zones."

"For instance, we have a zone for imported electricity — the western part of Ukraine. There, electricity reaches specific regions and cannot go further, as it is physically impossible to organize that. Therefore, it's reasonable to designate certain western areas so that they are grouped together and during the period of stabilization outages, they can independently shut down as a single territorial unit," Oleg Popenko explains.

The expert adds that the division into zones will be implemented based on the principle of electricity generation and how the networks are interconnected. Thanks to this new distribution principle, certain regions will receive more electricity, and the distribution will become more even.

"Currently, there are significant discrepancies in electricity distribution. For example, in Kharkiv, there are no outages at all. Meanwhile, in the neighboring Sumy region, there are outages, and they are considerable. The outage schedules vary in each region. However, with the division into zones, there will be a certain alignment of stabilization outage schedules. Electricity will be turned off evenly across the zone, which includes three to four regions," explains the housing and utilities expert.

Mr. Popenko emphasizes that the zonal distribution can be organized quite promptly. In his opinion, the new approach will allow significant savings for the state; however, before launching such a project, a detailed modeling of electricity consumption across all regions of Ukraine should be conducted.

"We have regions with a deficit and those with a surplus; they are tied to one or at most two supply lines of electricity, and all this together allows for building a certain consumption model. Therefore, regions need to be united into zones so that they have the required volume of consumption that can realistically be met," concludes Oleg Popenko.

We also reported on what electricity outage schedules are in place for December 10. On that day, electricity restrictions are planned from 7 AM to 10 PM in two shifts for subscribers, as well as for industrial consumers and enterprises.