Ukraine Tenders 1.3 GW of Flexible Power to Rebuild Grid Shattered by Russian Strikes

Ukraine Tenders 1.3 GW of Flexible Power to Rebuild Grid Shattered by Russian Strikes The capacity procurement aims to cover peak demand by 2028 after Russian attacks destroyed 80 percent of Ukraine's thermal generation fleet. Ukraine has launched a tender to build over 1.3 GW of flexible power capacity by 2028, a procurement that analysts say will improve the resilience of its energy system against continued Russian attacks and help cover peak electricity consumption. The tender is the largest single capacity procurement Kyiv has undertaken since the war began, Montel reported.⁷ The scale of the need is stark. Russian strikes have taken out some 80 percent of Ukraine's coal- and gas-fired generation, according to the Economist. That destruction has left the country dependent on nuclear baseload and intermittent imports for a grid that must serve both civilian and military demand through another winter. The 1.3 GW tender, while meaningful, replaces only a fraction of what has been lost.³ The human cost of the grid's fragility is already visible. During outages, older residents are trapped on higher floors of apartment buildings. Individual home boilers need portable power stations to keep heating running. One resident told the Economist she slept in furs to stay warm after her power station cut out. When internet providers go down, neighbours piggyback off each other's connections.⁴ The tender's focus on flexible capacity rather than baseload is deliberate. Ukraine needs generation that can ramp quickly to cover peak demand and respond to the unpredictable pattern of Russian strikes. Battery storage, gas peakers and demand response are better suited to that role than large thermal plants that take hours to start and present concentrated targets. The procurement coincides with a broader push to integrate Ukraine's electricity market with the EU. Ukraine's parliament adopted legislation to align its power market with European rules, paving the way for market coupling with the bloc, Montel reported. The law sets rules for allowing power to flow across borders in a coordinated framework.² Market coupling would give Ukraine access to European power during supply crunches and allow it to export surplus nuclear generation when its grid is intact. For European markets, particularly Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, the coupling creates a new source of both supply and demand on their eastern border. The direction of flows will depend on who is short at any given hour. The European power system's resilience to gas supply disruptions has improved since the 2022 crisis. The growth of green generation has made European and Nordic power systems more resilient to a gas shortage than during the first energy crisis sparked by Russia's invasion, analysts told Montel. Power prices have been more contained this time around.¹ But Ukraine's grid remains far more exposed. Europe diversified its gas supply and built out renewables over four years. Ukraine has been losing generation capacity to missile strikes over the same period. The 1.3 GW tender is an attempt to rebuild while the destruction continues. The gas transit dimension adds complexity. Hungary has moved to ban the sale of gas transit capacity to Ukraine in the third quarter of the year, a decision analysts told Montel was political rather than supply-driven. The European Union once relied on Russia for 40 percent of its natural gas demand, with Germany's share as high as 55 percent. Those volumes have largely been replaced, but the transit routes through Ukraine remain politically contested.^6,5 Diplomacy offers a thread of hope. At a meeting in Florida, Trump and Zelensky said they had converged on 90 to 95 percent of the issues under discussion, the Economist reported. But only 9 percent of Ukrainians say they would accept an end to the fighting that simply cements the current front lines without other concessions. Any ceasefire that holds would transform the investment case for Ukrainian power infrastructure. Any collapse in talks would make the 1.3 GW tender harder to deliver on time.^4,3 What to watch is whether the tender attracts credible bidders willing to deploy capital into an active conflict zone, and whether the EU market coupling legislation translates into physical interconnection capacity that can backstop Ukrainian demand during the next wave of winter strikes.^7,2