Ukrainian solar plant partly resumes operations after bombing

A 3.9 MW solar plant in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region has partly resumed operations after suffering damages in a Russian missile attack on May 28.

“Staff was able to disconnect the damaged strings and the 1.8 MW of power is now providing clean, green electricity to the grid,” said Stanislav Ignatiev, the CEO of the company that owns the facility, Solar Generation.

The Merefa solar plant, which is located 30 km south of Kharkiv, is the largest industrial solar station in the region. It provides electricity to the city of Merefa, a suburb of Kharkiv.

“This project is a vivid example of distributed generation, which is aimed at supplying energy to a small town,” said Ignatiev, noting that it features Talesun 325 W PV modules and 27 kW Fronius ECO 27.0-3-S string inverters.

The missiles damaged 416 solar panels, as well as four inverters.

“This type of damage is typical for a rocket or projectile hitting solar power plants in Ukraine,” Ignatiev said. “It should be noted that the station was built on a swampy area using geo-screws, so the supporting structures of the station were damaged locally as a result of the missile attack.”