TEK has become a reliable pillar of Ukrainian people during this toughest ever heating season in Ukraine’s entire history. Under conditions of martial law, professionals of DTEK Grids got Kyiv prepared for winter season, having repaired over 700 energy facilities and 126 kilometres of overhead lines. They addressed over 5 thousand emergency accidents, particularly, 348 that were caused by missile attacks. We restored electricity supply for 1 mln of clients in the capital. To ensure stable operation of the grids and to perform the repairs, 198 teams of electric installation engineers worked on the monthly basis, out of which 30 additional teams were established particularly to address emergency accidents.
As a result of missile strikes, Ukrainian energy system sustained damages of various scale. Because of this, emergency blackouts occurred in Kyiv on 14 counts during the heating season, and the deficit of available electric power was the case. In order to maintain operation of the nation’s energy system and prevent more large-scale damages and blackouts, DTEK Grids created hourly blackout schedules for the first time. Such activities of the company were the guarantee that stable supply of electricity to the city’s critical infrastructural facilities (i.e., hospitals, water supply facilities, heating stations, etc.) and fair distribution of available capacity among the population are the case. Such stabilization blackout schedules were applied in Kyiv during 124 days.
“Despite all difficulties that the war brought about to our daily work, we managed to prepare our grids to the previous winter. Particularly, we upgraded 126 kilometres of overhead lines and over 700 of energy facilities, among which there were 11 large high-voltage sub-stations. This became possible due to our team consisting of 1,712 employees of the company. DTEK has been a reliable pillar of Ukrainians during this toughest heating season in Ukraine’s entire history. We shall further do everything we can to remain the nation’s supportive pillar,”
said Denys Bondar, CEO, DTEK Kyiv Grids.
The war and blackouts have resulted into the number of requests to the company grow 2-fold. Just in terms of telephone calls, we received 1.8 million of these. To compare, we had just 700 thousand calls year-on-year. In order to receive such enormous amount of requests by the company, we increased the number of our call centre specialists from 32 to 50. At the same time, professionals at various tiers applied the most of their efforts to train the clients to use the company’s online services. Thus, the number of the company’s chat bot users grew 5-fold from 139 to 758 thousand, whereas the number of web-site visits grew 4-fold, from 1.8 to 7.3 million. Online services of DTEK Kyiv Grids allow to receive the following necessary services remotely, without engagement of the operator, personal visits and telephone calls: execute contracts, order connections, report meter readings and create service maintenance applications.
The toughest heating season in Ukraine’s history is over now, but DTEK Kyiv Grids have already started preparation for the upcoming winter. In 2023 the company’s professionals planned, among other things, to repair and upgrade 100 kilometres of overhead lines and 832 energy facilities, among which there are 12 high-voltage sub-stations. They also planned to make the necessary stocks of materials and expendables for restoration and repairs.
