KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine intends to maximise the amount of electricity it imports from the European Union during some hours on Monday after recent Russian missile attacks reduced the country's power generation capacity, the Ukrainian power grid operator said.
Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine's energy sector have intensified since March, resulting in blackouts in many regions.
The attacks have caused more than $1 billion of damage, leading to the loss of 8,000 MWh of generating capacity from the energy system, the government says.
"The total volume is 16,258 MWh, with a maximum capacity of up to 1,700 MW in some hours," grid operator Ukrenergo said on the Telegram messaging app about the amount of energy that could be imported.
It said Ukraine would import electricity from Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Moldova.
Ukraine can currently import no more than 1,700 Mwh of electricity from the EU states simultaneously.
Ukrainian energy minister German Galushchenko told parliament on Friday that Kyiv was negotiating to maximise possible imports of electricity from the EU countries.
The head of Ukraine's largest private energy company, DTEK, said earlier this month that an increase to 2,200 MWh could significantly improve the situation.
Ukrenergo CEO Volodymyr Kudrytskiy said last week that 3,500 to 4,000 MWh of interstate interconnector capacity could be installed in the next five years and European grid companies needed to reinforce their substations, install additional transformers, build new transmission lines.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
