Nearly three years of war has taken its toll on Ukraine’s solar industry. Almost 13% of the country’s pre-war solar generation capacity was located in territories now controlled by Russian forces, explained Olga Sukhopara, former director of development at the Ukrainian Association of Renewable Energy (UARE).
“Some of these solar power plants have been damaged, destroyed, or looted, but most are now connected to the Russian grids,” Sukhopara told pv magazine.
The war has had an increasingly negative impact on the Ukrainian energy sector, not least because Russian troops are advancing at record pace.
Estimates vary but Russian forces took at least 3,000 km² of Ukrainian territory in 2024, with some analysts recording up to 4,000 km². In November 2024 alone, independent Russian news group Agentstvo reported Russian troops captured 600 km², marking the fastest advancement since the early days of the war.
In January 2025, Russian troops stood only 8 km from the border of the Dnipro region, which houses numerous solar power plants.
Life has not been easy at solar plants still under Ukrainian control, according to Danyil Shyriy, energy market expert at Kyiv-based think tank DiXi Group.
Industrial solar plants with 5.9 GW of generation capacity are still in service in territories under the Ukrainian flag, Shyriy said.
“They suffer occasional shelling but are gradually recovering and continue to generate electricity,” he said. He added that the losses in the solar power sector are the worst in the frontline regions, where plants can easily end up in the crossfire during artillery exchanges. “Large industrial solar plants in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions suffered the greatest losses, with some facilities completely destroyed by shelling,” said Shyriy.
Fighting the darkness
In addition to ground assaults, Russia has been hammering Ukrainian energy facilities in massive aerial attacks involving barrages of missiles and kamikaze drones. Since late 2022, the country has been living under the constant threat of blackouts. Solar energy has been both a weapon and a target.
“Solar generation has played a critical role in mitigating the shortages caused by the loss of traditional power generation capacity,” said UARE’s Sukhopara. Following a series of attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in the spring, solar power helped avoid daytime outages between May and June of 2024, making a substantial contribution to stabilizing the grid, Sukhopara claimed.
A decentralized generation model has proved more resilient in the face of continuing attacks. DiXi Group’s Shyriy said thousands of rooftop installations on businesses and households partially cover daily consumption and help during emergency outages.
Along with electricity imports from the European Union, equal to the power generated by 2.1 GW of capacity, this factor reduces the deficit caused by the loss of large generating capacities and damage to thermal power plants – helping the Ukrainian economy to survive.
Even so, solar power generation has not been a silver bullet for Ukraine’s ongoing energy crisis.
“A significant part of the solar plants installed in Ukraine are grid-tied stations that cannot operate in case of outages,” Shyriy said. “This has significantly reduced their power generation potential in the event of stabilization or emergency power outages and has raised the issue of ensuring their autonomous operation.”
That can be secured by installing solar power plants in combination with energy storage facilities and hybrid inverters. Such solutions are not yet common in the country, however, not least because they require investment that not every company can afford.
International aid has proved essential in bolstering Ukrainian solar power generation since the invasion.
For example, Shyriy said the European Commission’s Ukraine Energy Support Fund had raised €875 million ($897 million), as of Dec. 19, 2024, to restore damaged power equipment. Some funding has been invested in green projects such as the 11 tenders recently launched for the purchase of solar panels for installation in Ukrainian hospitals.
Challenges remain. The ongoing conflict, systemic problems, and general economic uncertainty make substantial growth in Ukrainian solar capacity unlikely in the near future.
In 2024, the Ukrainian government introduced several programs to support renewable energy plants. Those included loans with state compensation to support interest rates for commercial projects. The “5-7-9%” loans are available to projects with a value of up to €3.3 million. For households, interest-free loans of €10,500 have been made available for PV and wind installations up to 10 kW in scale, when paired with energy storage systems.
Despite the state support, investment in utility-scale PV projects remains constrained. UARE’s Sukhopara said this is largely due to regulatory uncertainties. “Developers face challenges in securing financing without a guaranteed off-take agreement,” she said. “Additionally, wholesale price volatility and low capture prices for solar power further deter investment.”
New paradigm
On the Russian side of the barricades, there has only been marginal capacity growth during the past three years. It is still unclear to what extent Western sanctions against Russia have impacted solar power generation in the country.
As of late 2024, Russia had 6.61 GW of installed capacity from renewable energy sources. That accounted for just 1.12% of Russian energy consumption. The 70 solar plants operating in the country have a capacity of 1.79 GW, according to the Russian Renewable Energy Association.
The figure doesn’t include any capacity acquired since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Generating capacity in Russian-occupied Ukraine runs to around 950 MW, according to UARE.
A lack of growth in the Russian solar industry in recent years has been attributed to several factors.
“Firstly, the availability of traditional energy resources significantly reduces the economic incentives for introducing and developing solar technologies,” said Gordey Smirnov, an analyst at Moscow-based financial firm Finam. “Secondly, despite existing support measures, support for solar energy in Russia is significantly inferior in scale to similar programs in China and the United States. Finally, Russia has significant technological potential in the field of nuclear and hydroelectric power, which are often considered a more economically viable alternative to solar energy.”
Economic uncertainty also puts pressure on the photovoltaic industry in Russia.
“Our energy industry is developed in a paradigm different from that existing in the West or China, in which [Russian] solar power largely stays on the backburner,” a source in the Russian solar industry, who asked not to be named, told pv magazine.
The high cost of borrowing has also removed development opportunities in the solar power sector, the source said, citing the Central Bank of the Russian Federation’s decision to raise the interest rate to a historic high of 21% in October 2024.
“Commercial loans have become unaffordable for the solar power sector,” said the source, who also highlighted a lack of skilled workers.
Since the beginning of the war, nearly 1 million Russians, mostly young men of conscription age, have left the country. Large numbers have been lured by high wages in the defense sector. That has prompted the Russian central bank to sound the alarm over a persistent labor shortage, amid an estimation the economy lacks around 5 million workers.
In that context, the outlook is not positive for Russian solar. “Russian leaders don’t believe in renewables,” said the anonymous source, adding they didn’t think the solar industry will experience noticeable growth in the coming years “unless some radical changes in the political and economic landscape happen.”
Post-war recovery
What comes next for Ukraine’s industry could be decided in Washington, DC. US President Donald Trump has expressed a desire to end the conflict within six months following his return to the White House.
Whenever the fighting stops, the outlook for Ukrainian solar should be bright.
During three years of war, Ukraine has lost dozens of thermal power plants and other traditional sources of power generation. That has cleared a path toward replacing traditional coal-fired generation with renewables.
The post-war recovery should be seen as an opportunity to build a new clean power generation industry, according to environmental campaigners.
In July 2024, Greenpeace called on Western nations to develop a Solar Energy Marshall Plan for Ukraine. The title refers to the US aid program that helped rebuild much of Europe economically after World War II.
A Greenpeace model also found that accelerating PV deployment in Ukraine, to 3.6 GW of new capacity by 2027 – five times higher than the 700 MW currently planned – would be both feasible and economically advantageous.
UARE’s Sukhopara is also confident that the solar industry will be one of the pillars of the future recovery. “Once the war is over, there will certainly be a surge in demand for renewable energy, including solar power,” she said. “Solar generation, along with wind and other renewable sources, could play a pivotal role in filling the gaps left by traditional power plants, many of which have been damaged or destroyed.”
Solar energy has the potential to become a cornerstone of Ukraine’s power sector, Sukhopara added, contributing to a more diverse, sustainable, and secure energy mix. The successful integration of a large volume of solar capacity will depend on the deployment of flexible energy resources and the repair of existing infrastructure that has been damaged by the war.
“At present, the Ukrainian government appears to be prioritizing the construction of new nuclear power plants, which may reduce the investments in renewable energy sources,” Sukhopara said.
Once the conflict is over, foreign investors will likely be interested in building solar plants in Ukraine, according to DiXi Group’s Shyriy. “International donors and banks are ready to invest in energy-efficient and renewable solutions and many communities and businesses are already installing solar power plants to cover their own needs independently,” he said. “We definitely need energy storage infrastructure to store the electricity generated during the day and avoid sharp dips in its production during the evening peak hours. The development of such systems, as well as the restoration of maneuverable capacities – primarily gas turbine and gas engine capacities, will balance the large share of solar generation and make the market more predictable.”
Shyriy added that deploying smart grids and utilizing demand-response potential would also be equally important factors in the future.
In the end, much depends on when and how a peace deal will be struck. There are no concrete signs that the war is drawing to a close, and whether the US president delivers on his promise of swift peace remains to be seen. How the war ends will also matter. Ukraine needs lasting peace to truly unlock the potential of its solar industry, as the threat of a return to conflict would clearly hamper any development opportunities.
By Ian Skarytovsky
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