"This equipment will be rapidly delivered to Ukraine on an emergency basis to help Ukrainians persevere through the winter," the US State Department said in a statement at the G7+ summit during a NATO ministerial meeting in Bucharest on Tuesday.
The package will include distribution transformers, circuit breakers, surge arresters, disconnectors, vehicles, and other key equipment.
The White House is set to work with allies to seek short- and long-term solutions to stabilize Ukraine's energy network.
The United States says it has already provided more than USD 32 billion in support since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.
The Energy Community Secretariat, an international organization consisting of the European Union and a number of non-EU countries, has since March been coordinating donations of specialized energy equipment to repair Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
Thirty-seven shipments of spare parts from European companies, including Poland's state-owned PGNiG, Gaz-System, Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne and PKN Orlen companies, have already arrived in Ukraine.
Speaking at the outset of the Bucharest meeting, Artur Lorkowski, the Polish director of the Energy Community, said that the Ukrainians “have some equipment which they stored before the war, but this storage is running out.”
He added that the “top priority” is transformers, which are used in substations targeted by Russian strikes.
Lorkowski also said that Russian forces managed to “split the grid in two” in October and “then they are focusing on fragmentation of the grid into small isolated units,” which resulted in Ukraine’s national energy company Ukrenergo announcing that the country is now facing a 30 percent electricity shortage.
Russia, which has been intensely attacking heating infrastructure and the energy grid in Ukraine since October, has been accused by Kyiv and allies of deliberately harming civilians.
(jh/gs)
Source: biznesalert.pl, state.gov, The Guardian