Commentary
Mark Dowdall
Power & water editor

One of the clearest lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine is the role that decentralised energy sources can play when large power plants and grid infrastructure come under sustained attack.

Since the full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine’s electricity system has faced repeated missile and drone strikes targeting generation plants and substations.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a wave of attacks between March and May 2024 alone resulted in the loss of 9GW of generation capacity, almost half of Ukraine’s total peak electricity demand.

Despite this damage, the country’s electricity system has continued operating, albeit under strain, supported by electricity imports, quick repairs and distributed energy systems.

The IEA notes that Ukraine has installed about 1.5GW of rooftop solar capacity since the invasion began, much of it operating behind the meter and able to generate electricity locally when sections of the grid are disrupted.

Battery storage is also beginning to scale up. In 2025, Ukraine’s largest private energy company commissioned 400MWh of battery storage capacity designed to stabilise supply during disruptions to generation and transmission infrastructure.

The Gulf region is already investing heavily in solar power, hybrid plants and battery energy storage systems.

These projects are often framed as part of the energy transition; however, they also offer the benefit of allowing the network to continue operating even if major infrastructure is disrupted.

It is worth noting that power systems in the GCC are built around very large plants designed to meet extreme summer demand, so decentralised systems would unlikely replace them entirely.

Even so, the war in Ukraine shows that during sustained conflict, resilience can quickly become just as important as generating more electricity.