Kiev locals pool together for solar panels, batteries

KIEV

When Russian strikes cut off the power, heating and water to swathes of the Ukrainian capital in minus 20 degrees Celsius temperatures, Denys Biletsky was prepared.

Following a round of particularly intense Russian barrages two years earlier, Biletsky had convinced his neighbors to chip in together to install solar panels and batteries on the roof of their high-rise apartment block.

As Ukraine accuses Russia of trying to freeze the population into submission with its most intense attacks on the energy network of the entire war, more and more people in Kiev are fundraising and pooling cash to buy alternative sources of shared electricity.

"Without backup power, our building simply wouldn't be able to function," Biletsky, the 42-year-old head of his building's homeowners' association, told AFP.

On the roof of the 25-storey block, overlooking a sea of residential towers stretching across the horizon, he dusted fresh snowfall off dozens of solar panels with a wooden brush.

The 400-odd residents pooled 700,000 hryvnias ($16,200) to buy and install them, along with the batteries and other required equipment.

Russian missile and drone barrages have pushed Kiev into its most serious energy crisis of the war.

Electricity is turned off for hours on end to ration supplies, and more than 1,000 of Kiev's 12,000 high-rise residential buildings have been without heating for the past month after a heating station was destroyed.

The back-up supply in Biletsky's block meant the lift, unlike in many buildings, was still shuttling up and down, and electric pumps were able to send water to the top floors.

Without it, there would be none above the ninth floor, said Biletsky.

"After the inverter was installed, we have constant heating, hot and cold water," said Tetyana Taran, who lives on the 20th floor.

The inverter is the device that automatically draws supplies from the battery when the mains switch off.

In her building in central Kiev, Tetyana Chernyshenko is another person who persuaded her neighbors to club together for a generator.

"We printed lists, collected signatures, posted notices explaining what it will be and what it's for," she said.

Now they were waiting for it to arrive.

"People in this building are far from poor. Most have installed autonomous systems for themselves," Chernyshenko, 55, explained.

Her family opted for solar panels.

"But heating and elevators can't be fixed locally. You can't solve that with a battery in your own flat."

The solution is far from ideal.

When outages drag on for hours, the back-up batteries don't have time to recharge, forcing Biletsky to cut the lift off to prioritize water pumps.

Despite the snags, the joint effort had brought the building closer together in the face of the unrelenting Russian attacks, he said.

"It did unite us. People have become more like a family."