Kyiv's Desniansky district head calls for alternative sources of electricity and heat of 100 MW and 300 MW before the start of next heating season

The head of the Desniansky district state administration in Kyiv, Maksym Bakhmatov, has proposed building alternative electricity and heat sources with a combined capacity of 100 MW and 300 MW respectively ahead of the next heating season, as the district’s sole combined heat and power plant (CHP) has once again been knocked offline.

"If we don’t start thinking about independent heat and electricity generation now, Desniansky district will freeze next year. By Sept. 15, 2026, we must build 100 MW of electricity and 300 MW of heat. Or more — as much as we can manage," Bakhmatov wrote on Facebook.

He said such capacity would give the district a genuine chance of getting through the next heating season.

Bakhmatov explained that the district’s heat supply depends on a single CHP plant, which was shut down again on Feb. 12 following a Russian strike. He said Russian forces would continue to target the plant regardless of how many times Kyiv repaired it, and that the only solution for residents of what he described as Ukraine’s largest district was to build a network of smaller heat sources. He pointed to more than 100 boiler houses on Kyiv’s right bank as a working model.

"Even if billions of hryvnias — or perhaps even dollars — are poured into repairing destroyed CHPs, the aggressor country will keep hitting them. And heating will stop again. There is only one way out: dozens and hundreds of small facilities. Kyiv has 130 small boiler houses and they are supplying heat right now — to residential buildings, dormitories, enterprises. That’s the right bank. We have nothing like that," he said.

Bakhmatov added that he intends to initiate an expert hackathon to develop concrete solutions for Desniansky district’s energy independence.

The proposal echoes comments made in late January by former Ukrenergo CEO Volodymyr Kudrytskyy, who said problems with Kyiv’s electricity and heat supply following Russian strikes could have been significantly reduced had generation sources been decentralized. He noted that Kyiv’s peak consumption reaches up to 2,000 MW, and that building approximately 700 MW of gas piston or gas turbine units would have been sufficient to ensure relative energy independence in the event of major generation facilities being destroyed. Kudrytskyy also highlighted that no air defense system in the world can guarantee 100% interception of missiles and Shahed UAVs, while the Troieshchyna residential area — home to 300,000 people — depends on a single large generation source.