The head of the Ministry of Energy said that the country stopped sinking at the peak of the evening and even started sending surplus electricity to Russia. The numbers on paper paint an ideal picture: the accident rate has been reduced, the thermal power plant has been upgraded, and next year we anticipate a surplus of one and a half billion kilowatt-hours.
From a human point of view, this joy can be understood. After spending last winter constantly worrying about Akibastus, Rider, and freezing Monotown, any sign of calm from the industry is met with relief. Since the stations can withstand the load and the networks do not break, this means that the repairs were nevertheless useful.
But if you put aside the first impression, the numbers raise questions. Those 80-120 megawatts that officials are talking about is next to nothing for a huge country. This is not a large-scale export or a breakthrough, but normal technical flows between neighboring energy systems for safety net purposes.
And the beautiful excess turns out to be so ungrandiose. One and a half billion kilowatt-hours is just four days of activity for our entire energy sector. A week of abnormal frost is enough, when the country turns on all the heaters at the same time, and all this reserve will melt without a trace. The repairs gave us a break, but the issue is not fundamentally closed: new capacities are hardly being built, and the demand for energy only grows every year.
We can only hope that this stability will be enough for the whole winter, and not just for good reports at the beginning of the season.