Solar Microgrids Are Keeping Ukraine’s Hospitals Running
Art Hunter
Two months ago the streets of Kyiv were desolate, the sounds of ordinary life replaced by near-constant air-raid sirens and its people either fleeing or confined indoors as Russian forces tried to take Ukraine’s capital city.
Today normal life is slowly returning, and families and couples once again stroll the streets. But reminders of the war that still rages in the country are everywhere, from the anti-tank “hedgehogs” and concrete blocks dominating many of the city’s roads to the armed soldiers continuing to enforce a city-wide curfew.
Then there are the huge queues of cars stretching away from every remaining gas station as customers desperately try to re-fill their tanks. It’s a scene currently being repeated across Ukraine and a stark indication of the acute fuel shortage the war-besieged country is facing.
During any conflict, fuel sources and power grids are a critical target for an invading force. In Ukraine, Russian missiles have attacked the country’s only fully-functioning oil refinery and a blockade of Ukrainian seaports means resupplying the country by tanker is not possible. In April, Russian hackers targeted the Ukrainian power grid, attempting to cause a blackout that would have impacted two million people.
So it was that as the first missiles fell on Ukraine in February, American renewable energy experts Will Heegaard and Paul Shmotolokha lept into action to support Ukrainian hospitals — themselves believed to be the subject of a Russian “terror bombing” campaign — in anticipation of the fuel and power crises that they knew would soon take hold.
“You have to look at the vulnerability of the grid,” says Shmotolokha, CEO of New Use Energy. “What we see in Ukraine is the physical damage to transmission infrastructure, to power generation. All those flying missiles that are going after diesel and gas supplies.”