14.03.2025
Serhii Kucher is the Deputy Director of the Department of Personnel Management and Social Issues at PJSC “Ukrhydroenergo,” an engineer with extensive experience in electric power engineering and industrial thermal power engineering, covering a wide range of work areas.
Having started with the commissioning of large boilers, for over 30 years he has continuously expanded and deepened his energy expertise. He has significant experience in conducting surveys of energy facilities at industrial enterprises and power plants, developing plans to improve their efficiency, creating technical specifications for the modernization of outdated equipment for energy projects, and engineering thermal power systems.
Serhii Vladyslavovych conducts consulting and lecturing activities. He is an international expert at the public union “CIGRE-Ukraine” – the International Council on Large Electric Systems CIGRE in Ukraine. Many of his publications are dedicated to issues of the electricity market, operating modes, and energy system development. During 2022-2023, under his leadership and with his significant personal involvement, research was conducted on studying the potential of demand management to improve the flexibility of Ukraine’s unified energy system.
Currently, he teaches the course “Distributed Generation: A Step Towards Ukraine’s Energy Independence” at Energy Club, with which Serhii Vladyslavovych has been collaborating since the community’s inception.
“It so happens that I’m more concerned with demand management issues and active consumers, which I work on as a member of the public union CIGRE-Ukraine, which is also a member of Energy Club. It’s specifically in this direction of my public activities that I actively collaborate with Energy Club,” he explains. “The topic of distributed generation has been relevant since Soviet times, from the 1950s. When the problem of distributed emergency generation arose after the start of the full-scale invasion, it turned out that Ukraine lacked specialists who could provide competent information on this matter. That’s when my colleagues and I joined in to provide consultation. We needed to convey information to a wide range of consumers, to act as an igniter for discussing the potential of the issue. We distributed information through participation in various roundtables, of course on a volunteer basis. After a fairly short period of discussions and debates by specialists from the National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission, Ukrenergo, and others, the problem was clearly formulated and a flow of legislative changes and management decisions began to address it. Equipment manufacturers and engineering companies became actively involved, and several district heating companies had their own developments and widely shared their experience with colleagues.
Currently, I’m working in the same vein on ‘big’ energy analytics – modeling the development of energy systems, the interaction of different types of generation in the overall market balance – there’s work to be done.
“In the ‘Distributed Generation’ course, you address important issues such as: why electricity consumers are no longer just consumers, why communities need an energy plan, whether municipal energy needs its own electricity generation and what kind, how energy efficiency differs from energy management, why municipal consumers are key figures in distributed generation, what energy security and diversification look like at the settlement level, and so on.”
“Everything I talk about is based on experience – both my personal experience and that of my colleagues with whom I’ve communicated regarding project implementation specifically for communities. The main consumer of distributed generation is communities or simply consumers in various settlements. Ukrainian retail consumers currently have two main problems: the lack among the general population of, firstly, investment literacy, and secondly, energy literacy. I recently read with pleasure about discussions on introducing a subject on the basics of business activities in schools, so that children understand not only what a biological onion cell consists of or whether there was life on Mars, although that’s also necessary. Concepts about what business, credits, and individual entrepreneurship are will be useful in the life of each of them. The same applies to energy literacy. Previously it was simple: there is a producer and there is a consumer. And the consumer is not an energy specialist. But now a large number of completely accessible types of generation have appeared: everyone can install solar panels, an intelligent system for managing their own energy consumption, meaning every consumer has already become an energy specialist. But their level of awareness about how equipment works and how the electricity market works, and consequently their readiness to make decisions, is very low.
At the community level, the situation is even more complex. Communities must prepare their development strategy and submit projects. The theme of my lectures at Energy Club is focused on how communities can better find this information, where to start, how to take the first steps so that after correctly formulating the problems and requests, they can find experts and specialists who will help them implement these projects. Because currently, not everyone can even choose a generator correctly.
There is a great need for specialists who know how to arrange a loan, how it is serviced, repaid, what project documentation is, how to accept work from builders, and so on. Currently, there are no such comprehensive specialists, they are not trained anywhere, yet the profession is very much needed. There are bank managers who understand how to take out a loan. And engineers who know how to build or weld something. There’s no person who can communicate between these two and an investor.
“So Energy Club is moving in the right direction when it organizes this kind of training.”
“Undoubtedly. By the way, only a small number of projects are implemented exactly as planned. And among them are Energy Club projects, which started as a communication platform for people concerned with energy industry problems. Energy Club created an opportunity for energy specialists to gather together during meetings, forums, to discuss. We have known each other for over 20 years, and our discussions are a very important element both for us and for those who listen to them. I like to look at photos from Energy Club where ‘veterans’ are discussing something among themselves, and there’s always a crowd of listeners around them, carefully listening to what they’re talking about. In my opinion, this communication mission, apart from Energy Club, is not performed by anyone else in such a format on a permanent basis.”
