As Russian missiles continue to devastate Ukraine’s centralized power system, the country is turning to solar energy at a remarkable pace. Rooftop panels, batteries, and diesel generators have become part of daily survival for businesses, hospitals, and households enduring chronic blackouts. But Ukraine’s wartime solar rush is now exposing a new problem: the grid is struggling to absorb the very generation that helped keep the lights on, writes Ian Skarytovskiy.
Curtailment has now become a pressing issue for plant owners in Ukraine. Aquanova Development calculated that its plants experienced curtailments on 21 days over March and April 2026.
The Ukrainian solar industry’s growth is gaining momentum. Around 1.5 GW of solar plants were built in Ukraine in 2025, nearly double the 800 MW built in 2024, according to the Ukrainian Solar Energy Association.
Ukraine also imported 2.5 GW of solar panels – potentially sufficient to cover up to half of Kyiv’s daily energy consumption on a sunny day. As of Jan. 1, 2026, the total installed solar capacity in government-controlled territory exceeded 8.5 GW, Vladyslav Sokolovskyi, chairman of the board of the Ukrainian Solar Energy Association, told pv magazine.
“Following the loss of more than 20 GW of generation capacity – up to 50% [from the country’s total capacity] – due to Russian aggression, solar energy has become a critical element of Ukraine’s energy resilience,” Sokolovskyi said.
Earlier estimates suggested that Ukraine has lost around 80% of its wind and 20% of its solar power generation during the war, much of which is capacity left on territories controlled by Russian forces.
The difference between imported solar panels and newly deployed solar capacity is primarily attributed to what observers called “invisible generation.” Sokolovskyi explained that “a significant share of new capacity consists of self-consumption solar systems installed by businesses that do not export electricity to the grid. This reduces overall system load and enhances energy security for businesses and households under wartime conditions, rather than creating overgeneration.”
An ongoing surge of residential and commercial solar adoption is largely driven by fear, according to Sokolovskyi. Prolonged blackouts drive businesses and households to take care of their own energy security. Solar panels have become almost as commonplace in Ukraine as cars parked outside apartment blocks.
Rooftop arrays can be seen on schools, hospitals, office buildings, warehouses, and factories across the country as businesses and ordinary citizens scramble to secure at least some degree of energy independence amid relentless attacks on the power system. For many companies, a combination of solar panels, battery storage, and diesel generators has effectively become part of a wartime survival kit, helping to keep production lines running during rolling blackouts and emergency outages.
“Over the past two years, investor interest has extended beyond the construction of new utility-scale solar plants aimed at selling electricity on open markets,” said Olena Permiakova, CEO of Aquanova Development, a company developing solar and energy storage projects in Ukraine. Permiakova noted that household solar is growing at an unprecedented scale.
Energy shortages have traditionally been viewed in Ukraine as a winter problem, when cold weather drives up electricity demand while short daylight hours and cloudy conditions limit solar generation. But the scale of Russia’s attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure has become so severe that Ukraine is now also facing supply deficits during the warmer months. The current shortfall stands at around 1 GW, according to the Ukrainian Energy Ministry, roughly five to six times lower than during winter peaks, but still significantly enough to underline the fragility of the system.
Paradigm shift
The share of renewables in Ukraine’s total electricity generation mix reached 11% in 2025, with solar accounting for 78% of all renewable generation, according to the UARE.
Battery adoption is gaining traction, too. Sokolovskyi said the solar-plus-battery model became dominant in 2025. “Solar generation without storage is no longer considered a complete solution for the power system.”
“The growth of solar generation requires the parallel development of system flexibility solutions, including energy storage, flexible generation capacity, demand response mechanisms, and deeper integration with the European electricity market through market coupling,” added Olga Evstigneeva, development director at the Ukrainian Association of Renewable Energy.
The Ukrainian solar industry learned lessons from mistakes made during the last several years. “If renewable energy facilities are built haphazardly, as was done in Ukraine during the war, they will have no noticeable impact on the overall energy system,” said Gennady Ryabtsev, an energy industry analyst with think tank Psyche.
Thanks to massive investments, renewable energy exceeded the capacity of nuclear power plants in Ukraine. “We have 8 GW of capacity that are not operating – in winter due to weather conditions, and in summer because they are effectively no longer needed,” Ryabtsev explained.
On top of that, investors seeking to minimize the risk of asset destruction choose to build in regions of the country furthest from the front line. Market players warned that this creates an imbalance in industry development, with a shortage of grid connection capacity and land available for new projects in the Western region.
“Given the current level of consumption and the critically low flexibility of the energy system due to the destruction of dispatchable capacity, the existing solar generation capacity already poses challenges for absorbing that volume into the grid,” Permiakova said.
From the beginning of spring, as solar electricity production increases, plants are subject to dispatch curtailments during daytime hours, which negatively affects project economics, she added. Balancing remains a big challenge as peak solar output occurs in the middle of the day, when consumption is at its lowest. As a result, the Ukrainian energy market operator, Ukrenergo, curtails the operation of plants with a capacity above 1 MW for several hours each day to maintain system balance.
On some days, such curtailments last for nearly the entire active solar period. For investors, the only way to improve this situation is through the installation of energy storage systems (ESS). In March 2026, Aquanova Development calculated that its plants experienced curtailments on 11 days, with an average duration of 5.2 hours. In April 2026, curtailments occurred on 10 days, with an average duration of 3.5 hours.
Closer to the fighting, the war causes even greater disruption. “In regions where lines and substations are frequently shut down due to shelling, plants may be forced to sit idle for anywhere from several hours to several days at a time,” Permiakova said.
The combination of market and security challenges also weighs heavily on the average business’s profitability. For solar projects with energy storage, the payback period of investments is between six and seven years, while standalone solar projects are no longer economically viable, Permiakova added.
Growth challenges
Industry observers expect Ukraine’s solar boom to continue as businesses and households seek protection from chronic power shortages and future attacks on centralized infrastructure. The Ukrainian Solar Energy Association expects that more than 1.5 GW of new solar capacity and over 3 GWh of energy storage systems will be commissioned in 2026. “Ukraine has the potential to become the most dynamic solar and BESS market in Europe, transforming from a centralized system into a flexible, distributed energy model,” Sokolovskyi said.
The growth of invisible generation is also unlikely to lose momentum. To some extent, this is fueled by important recent legislative developments. For example, VAT and import duty exemptions for PV panels and BESS imports have been extended until 2028, while under new rules, BESS installations can now be deployed without complex construction permitting procedures.
Some important factors limit the industry’s investment appeal. In particular, Sokolovskyi pointed to the unraveling debt crisis in the market. As of April 2026, accumulated debt in Ukraine’s balancing market exceeded UAH 42 billion ($950 million), Sokolovskyi said, adding that this remains the main obstacle to attracting capital.
The biggest risks come from the absence of wartime insurance. This means that if the capacities are destroyed, investors can’t count on any compensation and the money will be lost. “The absence of effective military risk insurance mechanisms continues to hinder large-scale foreign investment,” Sokolovskyi said.
Despite uncertainty about the timing and scale of Ukraine’s eventual reconstruction, solar is already widely seen as an integral part of the country’s postwar recovery. Under the national renewable energy plan, the share of solar energy should grow to at least 15% by 2030.
Renewables should grow to 27% on the same timeframe, as Ukraine plans to gradually phase out coal-fired thermal power generation. “We expect solar energy to play one of the key roles in Ukraine’s post-war recovery, though Ukraine is not among the sunniest countries in Europe,” Evstigneeva said.
The key thing is that renewable energy should be given a priority in the future planning of economic reconstruction. “The reconstruction of Ukraine’s energy system should not simply mean rebuilding destroyed assets, but rather creating a new, more decentralized, resilient, and EU-integrated energy model,” Evstigneeva added. However, whether the future energy transformation becomes the foundation of Ukraine’s postwar recovery may depend not only on investment and technology, but also on how long the war continues.
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