Last week, the presentation of the 1st phase of DTEK Tyligulska WPP took place, the wind farm has already started working at full capacity. Among the guests of the event the CEO of DTEK Maksym Timchenko, regional authorities, members of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Energy and Housing and Utilities, representatives of the diplomatic corps, partners, as well as foreign and national mass media were present.
DTEK Renewables demonstrated 19 working wind turbines with a total capacity of 114 MW. The company's team overcame many difficulties that made the specialists even stronger and brought invaluable experience. The most difficult was to construct the first wind turbine amid the war. Today, it has already become a symbol of courage and invincibility of energy specialists.
The construction of the Tyligulska wind power plant began in 2021. DTEK Renewables planned to commission all 83 turbines of the wind farm with a capacity of 500 MW in August 2022 - on the Independence Day of Ukraine.
The engineering specialists designed the Tyligulska WPP before the construction works started. They accompanied the whole process from the very beginning.
"Our specialists participated in the design and construction. We constantly monitored and adjusted the project documentation to find the best solutions. I’m glad to see that this project continued to the construction stage, and the first phase of the Tyligulska WPP is already supplying electricity from the wind turbines to the energy system of Ukraine," explained Dmytro Neshev, head of the Engineering Department of DTEK Renewables.
At the beginning of 2022, the construction was well on schedule and gaining momentum. At that time, 6 wind turbines were installed and the foundations for almost 83 wind turbines had been already built.
"Before the start of the full-scale invasion, we applied voltage to the fifth turbine, which was already supposed to be put into operation. However, on the 24th of February, we woke up to the sounds of rocket fire. This military aggression shocked us, destroyed our current plans, but did not destroy our main plans", - says Maksym Bogadytsa, Chief energy engineer of DTEK Tyligulskaya WPP.
"The war caught our team of the Tyligulska wind farm at 4 in the morning, all of us woke up to a loud cannonade. At that time, our partners had already left the site following the recommendation of their embassies, and took the equipment with them. We left without cranes, without supervisors who controlled the installation process, - says Oleg Solovei, the Director of DTEK Tyligulska WPP. "Our first step in that situation was to evacuate our employees and to secure their safety."
Thus, the most ambitious "green energy" project in Ukraine was stopped for a while. The Tyligulska WPP was to become the largest wind farm with the latest EnVentus Vestas 6.0 MW turbines not only in Ukraine, but also in Eastern Europe.
"In April and May, our colleagues began to return to the construction site and began to preserve the equipment in order to save the facility so that it could be completed and put into operation in the future," says Liudmyla Yefremova, manager of technical supervision and commissioning of DTEK construction solutions.
"We believe in the victory of Ukraine, and we realized that it was necessary to continue building the Tyligulska wind power plant regarding the difficult situation in the energy system. This additional generation was necessary to get through the most difficult winter in the history of Ukraine with blackouts, in the conditions of constant shelling and destruction of Ukraine's energy infrastructure. We understood that it is important for our country", - says the CEO of DTEK Renewables Oleksandr Selyshchev.
In September 2022, the construction has been resumed. The SCM’s shareholder Rinat Akhmetov, who is interested in investing in renewable energy projects in Ukraine, as this is an investment in the future of Ukraine and strengthening the country's energy security, supported this decision and made it more confident.
"In fact, we did not understand whether we would be able to continue the construction without foreign partners. We prepared for a long time and evaluated our possibilities. No one has done such projects in Ukraine without partnership with foreign contractors, because all the supervision, all the high-tech operations have always been done by foreign partners. This is despite the fact that our team has great experience in the construction of 4 large wind farms with a total capacity of 500 MW and two solar power plants with a total capacity of 450 MW, which are among the largest in Europe. It seemed that we understand all the features of such projects, we know the best solutions. But the war brought a completely new experience and a different level of difficulties," said Oleg Solovei, director of DTEK Tyligulska WPP.
The main installation of 13 turbines of the wind farm was in winter, when the enemy attacks on the power system and blackouts began. Air alarms took about 20% and the worsened weather conditions (wind, fog, icing) - about 38% of working time.
"It was a complex puzzle that we had to put together. We understood that in order to pass the blackout, we needed to speed up the construction. "Ukrenergo" asked us to speed up as much as possible. We ordered a large drone that was able to raise 130 meters high and spray the faucet with antifreeze. This process was not easy, because the visibility was poor. I had to raise another one – a small drone, which illuminated the big one. Moreover, the drone itself also froze," says Kostyantyn Styopin, manager of technical supervision and commissioning.
The use of a drone with a liquid that helped defrost a tap is a unique know-how of DTEK Renewables employees. This helped significantly speed up the construction process.
"The turbine construction technology was planned for standard, non-military conditions, when the bad weather could be the only obstacle. In our case, there were also military risks we had to take into account. This process that requires maximum concentration of attention. And imagine - you are tuned in to work and then an air raid alarm sounds. Sometimes we were sitting in shelters for 6 hours. Then you get back to work and check everything again. You climb 125 meters up and here again – the air alarm!" – Yevhen Moroz, the site manager of Tyligulska WPP, shares his experience.
Constant air raid alarms significantly demotivated the construction team, some processes had to be restarted several times.
"When the air alarm is over - it does not mean that you immediately start doing something. It takes about half an hour to come back, climb a turbine, get ready for works. Attacks exhausted people both psychologically and physically. But we coped with it, we learned to plan works ahead in these conditions. We realised how important it was for our country to complete this construction," adds Artem Smirnov, Head of the capital construction department.
Currently, the estimated annual electricity production of the 1st phase of Tyligulska WPP is 390 million kWh, which is enough to cover the needs of up to 200,000 households. The operation of the Tyligulska wind farm will also have a positive environmental effect, which will cut up to 400,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually.
"The next step is the II phase - installing 64 wind turbines and achieving the 500 MW design capacity of the wind farm. We all went beyond our usual capabilities on this project and showed what we are capable of. I am very grateful to the entire team of DTEK Renewables, our construction team, our partners, the local authorities – to everyone who provided unprecedented help and support. I'm sure we still have a lot of projects and many victories ahead!" - Oleksandr Selyshchev, CEO of DTEK Renewables.
DTEK Renewables expresses its special gratitude to all the partners and government officials for their support and assistance in the construction of the wind farm. At the time of construction completion, Vestas, FairWind and Cranes of Ukraine became one team with DTEK Renewables. It would be impossible to implement this project without partners.
DTEK plans to expand the Tyligulska WPP - part of the company's larger strategy to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2040 and help Ukraine become a clean energy exporter to the European Union - remain dependent on additional funding of USD 450 million, mainly from foreign investors and from state-supported international financial institutions.
The completion of the wind power plant will make it the largest in Eastern Europe and will additionally provide clean energy to homes and businesses in the south of Ukraine, which significantly suffer from power outages due to shelling of the energy infrastructure.
The DTEK Renewables team is ready to create the future of Ukrainian energy and contribute to strengthening the energy security of both Ukraine and the whole of Europe.
