The energy industry in Ukraine is being urged to “self-limit” power consumption during times of peak demand.

Volodymyr Demchyshyn, Minister of the Energy and Coal Industry made the comment yesterday during a conference call with representatives of regional administrations and energy companies.

Earlier this week a “technical damage” shut down one of the reactors at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which led to a cut in electricity production.

Mr Demchyshyn said the nation currently lacks around 3,000MW worth of electricity capacity as one of the units at the nuclear power plant have yet to be switched on and also because there isn’t enough coal.

“Thus we are facing a problem with insufficient power generation”, he added.

He is urging the industry to voluntarily reduce power usage by 15% in a bid to help balance the electricity market and avoid outages.

• electricity, outage, peak demand, Ukraine