Maintaining Ukraine’s grid reliability under rapid growth of renewable electricity share: challenges in the pre-war, war-time, and post-war periods

Abstract

The paper deals with the problems of maintaining Ukraine’s grid reliability under high renewable electricity penetration and improving state policy measures to accelerate sustainable energy transition in the post-war period. Promoting renewable energy in Ukraine increased renewable electricity share in the country’s electricity mix to 13.8% in 2021. However, such growth became critical for Ukraine’s electric power system. Due to its inflexibility, the lack of balancing and energy storage capacities, adding significant amounts of renewable electricity to the grid created severe problems. Further renewable energy development required serious reforming policy measures, but the Russian invasion prevented introducing relevant legislative changes. At the same time, the war had an unprecedented impact on the Ukrainian energy sector, resulting in the damage of more than 50% of the energy infrastructure. Considering global trends towards decarbonisation and achieving climate neutrality, reconstructing Ukraine’s electric power sector will be based on the large-scale involvement of renewable energy technologies. Given this, based on the study of the trends in renewable energy development in the pre-war and war-time periods and the analysis of the shortcomings of the state energy policy, the paper examines the required measures for fostering resilient reconstruction of Ukraine's electric power sector.