27.11.2025
On November 20, the Energy Club forum “Energy of Freedom: Resilience and New Opportunities for the Energy Storage Market in Ukraine” took place in Kyiv. Facing unprecedented challenges to the energy system, participants discussed practical steps for developing the energy storage market and forming a transparent model to strengthen the country’s energy independence.
One of the key speakers was Oleksandr Dombrovskyi, Vice President, Head of Energy Innovations and Energy efficiency of MHP; President of MHP Eco Energy; Chairman of the Board of the Public union Global 100 RE UKRAINE. During the discussion, the forum moderator, Energy Club Vice President Maksym Nemchinov, raised questions about the prospects for Ukraine’s operation under market coupling conditions, the reasons for market volatility, the importance of the energy mix, and the need for state policy to reduce fluctuations.
Oleksandr Dombrovsky emphasized that discussing energy strategy in wartime and peacetime involves “two different philosophies.” Massive destruction of generation facilities changes the reality of the energy system daily, thus requiring an entirely new vision.
The traditional energy balance model — 55% nuclear generation, about 30% coal, 12% hydro, and 7–8% “green” — has ceased to exist. The balancing capacities of thermal power plants are practically destroyed. Therefore, Ukraine must transition to distributed generation, where an attack on one large station will not lead to large-scale consequences, and dozens of small objects are significantly less vulnerable.
According to the expert, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) are becoming the central element of modern energy. They don’t just store electricity — they allow for building a flexible, resilient, and effective operating model for various types of generation.
“Solar plus BESS is a unique product that works like a Swiss watch,” he stressed.
The company has practical experience operating BESS — over 15 integrated projects, from office solutions to industrial systems with a capacity of 10 MW (2 × 4 MWh). The enterprise is also developing its own laboratory for testing various storage combinations, including biomass, biogas, and new technologies.
The company’s portfolio includes:
According to the enterprise’s calculations, the “solar + storage” arbitrage yields a minimum of 30% economic efficiency due to own consumption and the absence of transmission costs.
One of the critically important criteria for business during the war is the BESS switching time during a blackout. Oleksandr Dombrovsky reminded that most SPPs before the war were built with grid inverters — they did not work during outages. Hybrid solutions and BESS allow avoiding this problem.
Despite the private sector actively installing storage, the expert noted the complete absence of state storage projects: “I do not know of a single state project for 100, 200, 400, or 500 MW. And this is what is needed to balance nuclear and thermal units.”
He emphasized that for the same 600 million that was once planned to be spent on old Bulgarian reactors, a powerful balancing system based on BESS, integrated with the EU market, could have been created.
Before the war, Ukraine had over 1.5 GW of private SPPs (up to 30 kW). If the state had launched a compensation program for installing storage, this capacity could have significantly supported the stability of the energy system at the territorial community level, Oleksandr Dombrovsky emphasized.
Communities and large businesses are already creating their own distribution networks capable of operating in island mode.
The speaker separately drew attention to the problematic relations between investors and regional power companies, which often block or delay project development. According to him, this forces enterprises and communities to create their own distribution networks, which may eventually attract investors in modern transmission lines and digital infrastructure.
In Europe, companies can receive 20–40% CAPEX compensation when building BESS. This does not exist in Ukraine — which is why the pace of development is slower than it could be.
“If we had the opportunity to return at least 10–20% of the investment, we would move forward much faster,” Oleksandr Dombrovsky concluded.
Ukraine has entered a period where speed is the main factor in the survival of the energy system. The development of distributed generation, BESS integration, and network modernization are happening before our eyes, and the state must support these processes instead of slowing them down.
“Today we cannot walk; we must move at extremely fast rates,” Oleksandr Dombrovsky emphasized. “The whole world is accelerating; artificial intelligence is developing. And we must accelerate. Whoever doesn’t move quickly will simply fall behind.
Right now, before our eyes, in the conditions of a brutal war, a very rapid development of distributed generation is taking place in Ukraine. I know large businesses that never planned to engage in the production and generation of energy resources. However, today everyone is doing it. God willing, the war will end, and this trend will continue.”
