Demand for backup power products at the Epicentr retail chain remains consistently high, with power bank sales up 44% and power station sales up 28% in the period from Aug 3-9 compared with the previous week, the company’s press service told Interfax-Ukraine.
Although Ukrainians are gradually stepping up their readiness for power outages amid recent massive shelling and government warnings of a difficult winter, no global shift in consumer behavior has been recorded during this period, the company said.
"So far we haven’t seen a surge that could be called mass preparation for winter. The category of products for energy independence traditionally reacts more sharply to periods of large-scale power outages," Epicentr retail director Dmytro Tanko said, commenting on the situation.
He noted that demand for backup power products remains consistently high and is growing year-on-year, which rather reflects Ukrainians’ gradual adaptation to wartime conditions and regular power outages.
At the same time, Tanko said, consumers have gained significant practical experience using such solutions in recent seasons, which is reflected in equipment choices: buyers are gradually shifting to more powerful models and selecting equipment specifications more precisely to match their needs.
In the power bank segment, models with a capacity of 20,000-30,000 mAh remain the most popular, accounting for almost half of sales. The share of the highest-capacity models grew by only 1.3 percentage points over the year, meaning that the key criteria when choosing a power bank are becoming not so much capacity as mobility and power, including the ability to charge a laptop and support for fast charging.
The trend towards more powerful solutions is more pronounced for power stations. While stations with a capacity of up to 1,000 W accounted for 37% of sales in 2025, their share fell to 26% in 2026. At the same time, the share of stations with a capacity of 1,000-2,000 W grew by almost 13%. Stations with a capacity of more than 2,000 Wh remain the sales leaders by capacity.
Uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) showed a particularly notable increase in sales, up 3.6 times year-on-year. Models with a capacity of 1-1.5 kW are in the highest demand. The main growth factor is the affordability of such solutions compared with kits based on hybrid inverters and batteries. UPS devices in this segment are a more accessible solution for consumers looking for basic backup power without significant upfront costs.
Backup power kits based on hybrid inverters and batteries with a capacity of 5 kW or more showed a 2.2-fold increase in sales compared with last year. Due to the high cost of the equipment, no sharp increase in demand has been observed among Epicentr’s retail customers. The biggest surge in retail sales of such kits occurs during periods of prolonged power outages and blackouts. However, steady growth in sales of inverters and batteries is clearly visible in the cashless segment, the company said.
It noted that the main demand in this segment comes from small and medium-sized businesses investing in their own energy independence.
The company added that there is currently no shortage of products in the backup power segment, and prices remain stable compared with last year. Thus, the current increase in sales cannot be described as a distinct wave of mass preparation for winter, since buyers are primarily meeting their current backup power needs, although they are also taking the coming winter into account when choosing equipment, Epicentr concluded.
According to the company, overall sales dynamics in other product categories remain stable, with increased demand being mostly localized, including in certain food categories such as grains, flour, oil and canned goods.
