The power system of Ukraine has demonstrated a certain reserve capacity to cope with low temperatures and operates stably, however, saving electricity now in order to avoid outages in the future remains important, head of NPC Ukrenergo Volodymyr Kudrytsky has said.

"We are getting through today even without emergency assistance, which we request from time to time in order to balance the energy system. Even at such low temperatures we can cope on our own, so there is still a certain reserve capacity, but it is not as large as we would like, so we continue to urge our citizens to use electricity carefully over the next few days to avoid blackouts," Kudrytsky said during a national telethon on Monday.

At the same time, he noted that, unlike December, when Ukrenergo several times asked for emergency assistance from neighboring countries to balance supply and demand, although it was warmer than January, "now there is more thermal generation operating on coal or gas, and hydroelectric power plants are also being more actively involved."

"These two types of generation are balancing the situation now. But the resource of the same hydroelectric power stations cannot be used in intensive modes for a long time; they usually last for several days, so we treat this resource with care. And therefore, the more electricity we save, the better we will be able to get through the cold spell," the head of the system operator explained.

He noted that energy savings by the population have a certain positive impact on the energy system.

"We estimate the effect of savings at 1-2 - up to 3 standard thermal generation power units. This is 200-400 MW. This is quite significant for us, because the deficit that we sometimes talk about amounts to several hundred MW, so without saving it would be more difficult," Kudrytsky emphasized.

He also added that Ukrenergo is fully equipped with repair teams, of which it has about 100 and includes 1,500 motivated company employees, "ready to restore power supply as quickly as possible."