Ukrainian Energy Ministry reports problems in power system

MOSCOW. May 7 (Interfax) - Bad weather has caused outages in 54 communities across Ukraine, including 42 in the Chernigov region alone, Ukrainian media have reported with reference to the Energy Ministry.

Apart from that, outage schedules keep being applied owing to grid transmission limitations in the Kharkov region and for industrial customers in the city of Krivoi Rog. No restrictions are being applied in other regions.

In Krivoi Rog, industrial customers were cut off from power supply as a dry grass fire caused an outage of power substation equipment at a local enterprise. Technical malfunctions also disabled an overhead power transmission line at another enterprise, partially cutting power supply to a substation, which left a local industry sector without electricity and disrupted processes.

As reported earlier, a facility of the national power grid operator Ukrenergo was damaged on Monday, cutting off power supply to over 400,000 customers in the Sumy region.

The Energy Ministry said engineers have now returned electricity to almost all customers in the Sumy region. "At the present time, 5,400 customers in the Sumy region have no electricity," the ministry said.