Ukraine to open power exports to Poland

The Ukrainian plant has for more than 40 years supplied the south-eastern Polish city of Zamość.

In total, Poland will buy 200 megawatts of power. This will supplement power depletion suffered due to cuts in production after the unusually long hot spell reduced water and hence power plant cooling capacity.

Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Thursday requested the Ukrainian Energy Ministry to assist Poland with its energy crisis caused by the current heat wave.

On Wednesday the Ukrainian Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn told reporters that there was no possibility of increasing the supply of electricity to Poland. "We cannot help them today," he said.

Demchyshyn explained that this is due to the renovation of power plants in the Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv regions in western Ukraine, which supply electricity to Poland, among others.

The recent heat wave in Poland has forced the national supplier to cut electricity to factories for several hours a day. Temperatures in places have reached 38° Celsius and there has been almost no rainfall, also leading to a drought in agriculture.

For several years there has been a debate about large-scale electricity imports from Ukraine. In the past year, Polenergia – a company 99 percent owned by Kulczyk Investments - has signed a letter of intent with Ukrainian company Energoatom to run a large interconnector between Poland and Ukraine, with energy coming from the Khmelnitskiy nuclear power plant, located near the city of Lviv. But renovation of unused high-tension power lines connecting Ukraine with Rzeszów could cost an estimated one billion dollars. (jh/rk)