Recently a Russian bomber launched 4 KH-101s at a thermal powerplant near Kyiv, one of which was caught on vid being shot down.
Related to Ukraine's energy situation, interview with "Director of Center of Energy Research" in Ukraine, Alexander Kharchenko.
The CHP-6 (Combined heat and power plant) mentioned in the article is the plant being struck by KH-101s in the gif. According to Kharchenko, the main targets are the transformer substations.
NV: CHP-5 in Kharkiv, and later CHP-6 Kyiv were attacked and black smoke appeared there. Why did that happen?
Kharchenko: That’s the oil in the transformers burning. It is now one of the scarcest commodities in Ukraine. The city of Mykolaiv alone needs about 120 tons of technical oil, and without it, sometimes even barely damaged transformers cannot be repaired. They need to be refilled. When the transformer is knocked out, this means that plant cannot supply electricity to the grid. Basically, it doesn’t exist. If these transformers are destroyed, it will take a long time to build new ones. It’s not something that can be manufactured beforehand and plugged in where needed. It takes a separate project, developed for a couple of months – complex technological work that cannot be done quickly. This is what lowers the stability of the Ukrainian power grid. This is the kind of damage that degrades its resilience.
Why are Ukrainians being asked to reduce electricity consumption during peak hours? Because all those temporary solutions can’t hold under full load. And when engineers see the network cannot cope, they are forced to make emergency shutdowns. These temporary blackouts take entire sections of the grid offline, reducing the load and preventing the whole system from collapsing. If people save a little electricity, there is a chance the grid will hold after all.
The power plants in Kyiv aren't enough to sustain the city, Russia striking the power distribution nodes (transformer substations) is hurting badly, and it doesn't help that transformers need oil to operate. These aren't easy to replace and rebuilt, and fragile, but there are thousands to knock out in Ukraine. Sounds like the perfect target for Shahed-136s.
Someone else also mentioned District Heating provided by these thermal power plants in this thread, per the article this is indeed the case. He ends on an optimistic note and said that Ukraine can keep up with repairs, negotiations with Japan and other countries to get replacements, Russia doesn't have enough missiles, etc.
