As part of the project, six facilities ranging from 20 to 50 MW were connected across Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
Construction took place from March to August 2025 and cost DTEK €125 million. The total storage capacity of the system reaches 400 MWh, which is sufficient to power up to 600,000 Ukrainian households for two hours. Ukraine’s Minister of Energy, Svitlana Hrynchuk, emphasized the strategic importance of the project: under ongoing massive attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure, storage systems are becoming as essential as generation itself.
DTEK CEO Maksym Timchenko described the commissioning of the BESS as a historic step for Ukraine’s energy system, setting the tone for its development for years to come. He noted that the collaboration with Fluence enabled the deployment of cutting-edge technologies to enhance the reliability and resilience of the grid.
Fluence CEO Julian Nebreda emphasized that the project contributes to a stronger, decentralized, and more resilient Ukrainian energy system. He also stated that the project stands as a symbol of international cooperation and innovation even in challenging times.
The initiative to build the 200 MW advanced energy storage system was announced in January 2025. The project included six units and was initially estimated at €140 million. In June 2025, DTEK secured a €67 million loan from a consortium of Ukrainian banks (Oschadbank, PUMB, Ukrgasbank) to build a 180 MW BESS. It marked the first loan of such scale to support energy storage development in Ukraine.
DTEK also won a special auction held by Ukraine’s transmission system operator Ukrenergo to provide 140 MW of automatic frequency restoration reserve (aFRR) services. Under the terms of the contract, beginning October 1, 2025, Ukrenergo will purchase these services for five years at the auction price.
Fluence, founded in 2018 by Siemens and AES Corporation and headquartered in Washington, D.C., has built approximately 35 GWh of energy storage and 30 GW of renewable energy capacity globally. The company brings experience in integrating BESS into national power systems, with past projects including 201 MW in Lithuania and 450 MW in Germany.
Founded in 2005 to manage the energy assets of Rinat Akhmetov’s System Capital Management, DTEK is a vertically integrated energy company encompassing coal mining, electricity generation, and energy trading.
The DTEK-Fluence BESS project is now the largest in Ukraine and one of the largest in Eastern Europe, demonstrating the large-scale deployment of advanced storage technologies to strengthen national energy resilience.
