Three Days Without Power (and Counting) in Center of Ukraine’s Capital

For those who live in the 47-floor Carnegie Tower in the center of Kyiv, said to be Ukraine’s tallest building, the power outages that have followed Russian attacks on civil infrastructure are something they have learned to live with.

Carnegie Towers consists of two separate buildings: a dedicated Business Center facing the street and the 47-floor condominium block behind it. Almost half of the 230 apartments in the Tower, which are intended as domestic accommodation, are being used as businesses, many of them IT based, employing 10 or more, some considerably more, workers.

Of late the outage schedule has been something like 3-5 hours (or more) off, 2-3 hours (or less) on. Shopping, walking the dog, personal administration, leaving and returning from school or work etc. are all fitted in around the published schedule of outages.

But what happens when something extraordinary happens that the schedule doesn’t cater for?

Just such an event occurred this week and it highlights many of the issues of inefficiency and lack of motivation that still beset Ukraine, made worse by a country at war.

According to the schedule power was supposed to appear on Tuesday, July 16 at 6 p.m. after having been cut at 11.30 a.m. and it did – but only in some parts of the building. At least 30 or so apartments remained without power and have been ever since. There was power in the administrative offices, lifts were working, as was the emergency lighting in corridors and water was being pumped, but the affected apartments were left in darkness.

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Calls to the building management were met with an apology that nothing could be done that night as it was after 5 p.m. – it would have to wait until Wednesday morning. Calls to the DTEK emergency line were unreachable and left unanswered.

Wednesday came and the engineers from DTEK arrived to investigate at just before 10 a.m. the power having been restored at around 9:15. They couldn’t immediately find out what the problem was and were prevented from further inspection when another power outage was invoked at around 11:20 a.m. So, they went away saying they would return when the power came back on – which it did around 2 p.m. but they failed to appear.

The building management formally applied to DTEK to carry out repair work on Wednesday but were not given a specific time when work would start. There is an opinion that Carnegie consumes as much power as 10 nine story buildings – probably because of the number of offices that have multiple computer terminals and air conditioners running throughout the day.

Residents comment that, at the weekends when most businesses are closed, the frequency and length of power outages is much reduced.

On Thursday morning the specialist engineers arrived but were also unable to get to the bottom of the problem with once again their work being hindered by the ongoing power cuts. The carousel of engineers coming, only to be thwarted by the loss of power is continuing with no end in sight. There have been hints that the work would go much smoother if there was an "extra payment."

It is frustrating that DTEK which has individual agreements with residents of the building to supply electricity has been unable to find the cause of the problem and even worse controls the system of power outages that is preventing its engineers from carrying out the necessary repairs.

During the last three days, once the power comes on, there is a queue of disgruntled residents heading for the administrative areas as the only source of electricity to recharge their powerbanks.

In any case, the technicians were due to return this afternoon when the power was next due to be reconnected. It is be hoped that, they will have the motivation and enough time to get to the root of the problem.

As one resident said she “has her fingers, arms, legs and even eyes crossed” that they will find out what’s wrong. She has already had to throw out most of the contents of her fridge but is hoping the stuff in her freezer can be saved.