IPP DTEK Group and system integrator Fluence have together put a 200MW/400MWh BESS portfolio in Ukraine into commercial operation, a milestone praised by the country’s energy minister Svitlana Grinchuk.
The six battery energy storage systems (BESS) range from 20MW to 50MW each, have been connected to the power grid in the Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, and will provide ancillary services to transmission system operator (TSO) Ukrenergo.
The news comes two months after the start of commissioning activities in July, while construction took place between March and August, which DTEK said was significantly faster than the industry average for projects of such complexity.
There was an urgent need for them to become operational before winter, it said. Fluence was picked as the provider for the projects in January, and provided remote commissioning services for the projects because of the ongoing war. DTEK engineers were trained at Fluence projects in Germany and Finland.
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DTEK has invested a total of €125 million (US$146 million) in the projects, and secured project finance from Ukraine’s state savings bank for five of them in June. The projects are part of DTEK’s larger 500MW BESS deployment plan in Ukraine.
The firm also has a BESS project in Poland, set for commercial operation by 2027.
The company’s energy storage lead Vadym Utkin discussed the six-project Ukraine portfolio’s ancillary service contract wins, as well what the war with Russia meant for the energy grid, at last year’s Energy Storage Summit Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) 2024, put on by our publisher Solar Media. This year’s edition is in two weeks’ time.
“In the context of large-scale attacks on Ukraine’s energy system, the role of energy storage systems has become just as fundamental as energy generation itself. The National Renewable Energy Action Plan adopted by the government for 2030 clearly outlines the need for such installations, and today we are witnessing strategic goals being brought to life,” said Ukraine’s Energy Minister Svitlana Grinchuk.
“This is a historic step for the Ukrainian energy system and will shape its development for years to come,” said DTEK CEO Maksym Timchenko, pictured above at the site.
Other large-scale deployments in Ukraine that Energy-Storage.news has reported on include one from energy firm KNESS and a plan from the State Agency on Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving of Ukraine (SAEE) to deploy distributed BESS projects for resiliency.
