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Resilience of Ukrainian business to power outages – first-hand experience

Ukrainian companies have become more flexible and resilient during the war. They have learned to respond quickly to challenges, reconfigure processes and adapt them to new conditions. Some Ukrainian businesses prepared for emergency shutdowns in advance, anticipating the enemy’s actions.

Today, the main challenge for Ukrainian business is emergency power outages. 

We want to show in more detail the first-hand experience of how companies withstand these adversities and reserve all the resources necessary for work.


  • Automation TeraWatt Group LLC
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Irina Didenko, TeraWatt Group

Guarantees for performance of work to our customers are always one of the priorities in our activities. With the outbreak of invasion, TeraWatt Group fulfils its obligations under implemented projects in full without any failures and force majeure.

Considering working experience during the COVID-19 period, all company data and all software licenses are stored in cloud storage and data centers in different cities of Ukraine and in Dusseldorf (Germany), which meet all cybersecurity conditions. In addition, cloud systems have built-in disaster recovery tools and are available anytime, anywhere.

TeraWatt Group has entered into agreements with Polish partners and set up its own assembly shop in Poland, which allows it to fully carry out work in implementation of projects both in Ukraine and abroad. We are currently manufacturing control cabinets for some of our projects abroad.

Now all our offices have an autonomous power supply and Internet. Power is already provided by generators; we are currently forming a reserve. This is handled by a special department. We equipped all our offices with shelters provided with food and water. Today, the company buys power banks for recharging laptops and phones, and equipment for testing employees’ uninterrupted use of Internet at home.

Since 2013, TeraWatt Group has delivered its solutions and services to the international market through the German legal entity TeraWatt Solutions GmbH registered and located in Dusseldorf. This ensures financial and legal safety of our customers. We have relocated some of our colleagues to European Union and therefore increased our office in Germany. Currently we have 10 persons outside of Ukraine including electrical, software, and commissioning engineers. This allows us to ensure our presence on site, possibility to perform commissioning of our projects. We do all possible to develop our business activities both in the Ukrainian market and abroad. We will stand in these difficult times and unquestionably believe in the victory of Ukraine!


  • IT-Enterprise
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Oleg Shcherbatenko, IT-Enterprise

I just want to say once again: the IT-Enterprise team is working, projects are moving, timelines are being met. 

  • synchronized work schedules with outages; 
  • took care of backup power supplies; 
  • all data put in safe storage. 

I am proud of the team and every Ukrainian who, despite all the challenges, finds an opportunity to work.

You can also read an interview with Oleg Shcherbatenko, CEO of IT-Enterprise.


  • SoftElegance
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Andrii Starzhynskyi, SoftElegance

Part of SoftElegance’s employees returned to the office. We do have electricity and power generator, heating, stable internet connection and all usual benefits for comfortable work.

Those employees who are not in Kyiv or continue working from home bought additional power banks, expandable power stations, enough to work efficiently during the time without centralized electricity supply.

Some people have flexible hours of work or found co-workings near the places they live. Our office now transformed to some kind of co-working, some people have changed their previous dedicated working place or might work from the meeting rooms some hours. Also, we are very happy to see each other and there is this forgotten networking atmosphere in the office. 

We do everything for continuous delivery of services to our customers and users.

You can also read an interview with Andriy Stolbov and Andriy Starzhinsky, SoftElegance.


  • Infocom Ltd
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Olga Bilokon, Infocom

As for the outages, we understand the situation very well, so we prepared in advance, although recently we had to modernize a bit more.

Since we continuously work with foreign partners, stability and security is what we – as a Ukrainian company – have to demonstrate since 2014. Thus, we have switched to a number of cloud services (mail, data storage, IT-products development), so access to information is available from any place, which turned out to be extremely convenient for both us and our customers. 

We opened offices in Kyiv and Slovakia for mobility – we have opportunity to choose where to work: where it is convenient, where there is light, where there are more opportunities. 

As for the urgent issue of power outages, we also have advantages here. One of of our engineers’ specializations is projects for construction of solar power plants, and therefore in the main office we have a solar power plant on the facade, which significantly compensates for electricity costs and helps to accumulate it when more energy is produced than the office consumes. Our offices have long been equipped with uninterruptible power supply devices, but, of course, they were not designed for the fact that there would be no electricity for hours, so last month we installed a generator – we are with light and in touch.

You can also read an interview with Eduard Trotsenko, director of INFOCOM Ltd.


  • Interprojekt GmbH
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Ivan Kun, Interproject GmbH 

Working in conditions of power outages raised several issues that we had to solve on our own. It is a bit unusual to build such an autonomy, because we are used to buying these services from market players and not thinking about duplication of systems or partial duplication. But the war has made adjustments and we have to think about autonomous power supply for backup in critical moments of complete absence of grid power supply. When solving the issue of alternative energy and internet supply, we must understand that full duplication is an expensive pleasure and we need to find a solution for the minimum necessary amount of energy to ensure vital activity of the office for organization of employees’ work.

So we grouped critical resources and found an alternative to them:

  • Desktop lighting – battery-powered lamp.
  • Servers are powered by a separate 3kWt inverter generator (3 servers).
  • Computers – ordinary single-phase generator 7 kWt (about 30 computers with monitors).
  • Water – bottled for consumption and bottles with technical water.
  • Heating – this issue has not yet been fully resolved, but the vision is to equip air conditioners with outdoor unit heating and for this we will buy a separate generator and consider installing an electric boiler to maintain heat in water heating systems, which will also require a separate generator.
  • A separate issue is access to the internet. We are currently connecting another provider, and also purchased Starlink, but so far testing has shown that in urban areas it works at 18%, which does not provide a quality alternative for work. Therefore, mobile Internet from telecommunications companies is what now partially insures during absence of internet connection.
  • We also transferred everything possible to cloud servers.

You can also read an interview with Ivan Kun, Director of Interproject GmbH.


  • Vostok
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Mykhailo Sorokin, Engineering company Vostok

Planned actions:

  1. Data transfer from corporate to cloud server, with deployment of virtual workstations.
  2. Fully remote work.
  3. Purchase of uninterruptible power supplies of battery type and mobile generators.
  4. Assistance to staff in local connection to fiber-optic Internet networks for uninterrupted Internet traffic. If this is not possible, then procurement of Starlink.

You can also read an interview with Mykhailo Sorokin, CEO of Engineering company Vostok.


  • Forthreal
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Lev Vanyan, Forthreal

Providing autonomy for Home office, we have implemented measures as follows.

Power supply

Battery reserve – 3 12V batteries for 285 A in total, a charger that quickly recharges them (can give up to 45A of charge current, inverter type) and an inverter (converter) 12V to 230V with a capacity of 2 kW. In addition to all this, I assembled a small ATS shield, which automatically connects the inverter to me when the power is lost and then, when the power in the socket appears, inverter charging of the battery turns on.

This reserve (more than 3 kWh in total) is enough for a long time. But if there is no light for more than a day, there is a gasoline generator that I run during the day, and it powers heaters, other equipment + charges the electric reserve.

Lighting – LED lamps everywhere, so it consumes little.

Internet

The main channel is wired internet + backup via GSM operator (router with 4G SIM card and MIMO antenna with significant signal amplification). When the light goes out, I work from a very remote base station (diagnostic utility says that the distance to it is about 19 km).

Water

Reserve for 100 liters in the tank + there is a pump for 12 V. It is made so that when the tank runs out of water, I add from other reserve bottles. The pump provides enough power for the toilet, bathroom (boiler can be powered by a generator) + sink.


  • SAS Ltd.
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Andriy Gumennyy, SAS Ltd

Our employees are now all in different places and everyone works according to their own “outage schedule”. So far, there has not been such a situation that everyone had no light at the same time, so we delegate important and urgent tasks to those colleagues who are able to deal with them.

Production is not loaded now, so we have time to make current orders even in intervals between power outages.

As for commissioning, since we work with critical infrastructure facilities, they have backup power supplies, and so far we have not encountered significant delays due to power outages.

You can also read an interview with Andriy Gumennyy, chief engineer at SAS Ltd.


  • DIGITAP
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Sergey Yevtushenko, Indusoft

Firstly, we have purchased ecoflow charging stations that allow us to work for 6-8 hours.

Secondly, we have now laid a cable to connect a generator to the office. Generator is on order.

Thirdly, we have ordered and are waiting for Starlink. As soon as the second and third items are completed, we will have uninterrupted power and internet.

You can also read an interview with Sergey Yevtushenko, CEO of INDUSOFT-UKRAINE.


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