Ukraine must quickly increase investments in green electricity, for better resilience against Russia's persistent attacks on the energy system. This is according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The government has the task of developing a programme to encourage the installation of solar power and energy storage, said the president in Thursday's edition of the daily video address to the people.
In particular, schools and hospitals are being instructed to set up solar panels plus storage, and review their energy security and efficiency. Currently, Ukraine is being forced to implement rolling power outages in many areas, since Russia has blown up the energy infrastructure, and by next winter, the electricity system must have been decentralised more, according to Zelensky.
Faring better
Solar panels produce less electricity in winter, but Ukraine has noticed that even wind energy often fares better than other power sources.
Wind farms, which by definition are decentralised, stand robust against the focused destruction that a single drone implies for a power plant, said Andrij Konetjenkov from the country's wind power organisation Uwea recently to industry website Recharge.
Both civil and military
Since they are so dispersed, wind farms, from a military perspective, have shown themselves to be "remarkably resilient against persistent drone and robot attacks", he believes. And even if they are hit, only individual turbines are usually knocked out, which does not affect the power supply much and is relatively easy to repair.
Setting up turbines is much easier than building a power plant, which ensures rapid restoration of power supply, both civil and military, says Konetjenkov.
Uwea has previously published images of bombed-out turbines from, among others, the large Danish manufacturer Vestas.
