Ukraine has implemented a new scheme to combat the consequences of Russian attacks on the country's energy infrastructure, writes The Wall Street Journal. These are secret facilities where industrial batteries are installed, capable of maintaining power supply during bombings. These facilities are well protected, including air defense systems.
New technology parks in the Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions consist of rows of white battery blocks approximately 2.5 meters high. The total capacity of all parks is 200 megawatts, the publication writes. They can supply electricity to about 600,000 homes for two hours.
According to WSJ, the batteries themselves were developed in the USA. The batteries supply electricity if another energy source (such as a power plant) is shut down, which helps avoid rolling blackouts.
This is not the first such project in Ukraine: in 2021, a similar park was built in Enerhodar, Zaporizhzhia region, the newspaper notes. This city was captured by Russia, and as Vadim Utkin, an energy storage advisor at DTEK, told the publication, a few hours before it was taken by Russian troops, he erased the software necessary for the batteries to operate, turning them into 'expensive bricks'.