Ukraine Sees New Virtue in Wind Power: It’s Harder to Destroy – The New York Times about The Tyligulska WPP

In 15 months of war, russia has launched countless missiles and exploding drones at power plants, hydroelectric dams and substations, trying to black out as much of Ukraine as it can, as often as it can, in its campaign to pound the country into submission. The new Tyligulska wind farm stands only a few dozen miles from russian artillery, but Ukrainians say it has a crucial advantage over most of the country’s grid.

 
A single, well-placed missile can damage a power plant severely enough to take it out of action, but Ukrainian officials say that doing the same to a set of windmills, each one hundreds of feet apart from any other, would require dozens of missiles. A wind farm can be temporarily disabled by striking a transformer substation or transmission lines, but these are much easier to repair than power plants.

«The Tyligulska wind farm is our response to russians»,

said DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko.

«Builders worked in open fields about 60 miles from the front lines, hiding in a bunker when air-raid sirens sounded. Missiles fired from Russian ships in the Black Sea roared overhead but did not target the site. Cruise missiles flew lower than the turbines, trying to evade radar detection by Ukrainian air defenses», this is how The New York Times describes the work of power engineers at a wind farm construction site.

 
Plans for the Tyligulska project call for 85 turbines producing up to 500 megawatts of electricity, enough for 500,000 apartments — an impressive output for a wind farm, but less than 1 percent of the country’s prewar generating capacity.
 
Read more here – The New York Times