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Generation from renewables rose by 27.8% and 35%, respectively.
Ukraine's power plants in January-April 2020 reduced electricity generation by 10.9% year-over-year (y-o-y), to 49.73 billion kWh.
In particular, thermal power plants (TPPs) and combined heat and power plants (CHPP) over the period under review generated 17.34 billion kWh, which accounted for 34.8% of the country's total generation, which was 19.7% down y-o-y, according to the State Statistics Service.
National nuclear power plants (NPPs) over the four months of 2020 generated 28.88 billion kWh, which was also 4.6% below the amount in the four months in 2019. NPPs' share in the country's total generation was 58%.
Electricity generation by hydropower plants (HPPs) fell by 24.4% to 2.23 billion kWh, which accounted for 4.4% of the country's electricity output.
Electricity generation from alternative (renewable) sources of energy – solar and wind – rose by 27.8% and 35%, respectively. Solar stations and wind farms generated 1.26 billion kWh, which accounted for 2.5% of the country's electricity generation.
At the same time, electricity output in April 2020 alone, compared to April 2019, decreased by 27.2% at thermal power plants, by 5.9% at nuclear power plant, by 25.1% at hydroelectric power plants, whereas the generation grew by 30.9% at solar power plants and by 3.5% at wind farms.
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As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukraine in 2019 cut electricity generation by 4.9% from 2018, to 151.25 billion kWh.
Ukraine's acting Minister of Energy and Environmental Policy Olha Buslavets in April said that the Ukrainian power industry was completely unbalanced in mutual settlements. Moreover the state debt for electricity generated by renewables may reach UAH 26 billion (US$972 million) by the end of the year.
Due to the growing share of the "green" generation, the country's energy balance was revised. The updated balance of the energy system, approved by the Ministry of Energy and Environmental Policy, provides for the withdrawal of Energoatom's three nuclear units into a forced outage and operation of another five power units at reduced capacity.
At the same time, an insignificant decrease in the share of generation is supposed to be at thermal power plants, most of which are part of businessman Rinat Akhmetov's DTEK energy holding. Furthermore, DTEK's renewables (20% of the market) are expected to boost electricity generation as well.
At the same time, thermal generation and renewables are much more expensive than nuclear, which affects electricity tariffs across country.