I published a new article for CIGRE Ukraine (the Ukrainian National Committee of the International Council on Large Electric Systems) on a question I keep returning to: what does rebuilding Ukraine’s energy system actually begin with?
The short answer is not “more generation.” It is visibility. Much of the grid is still effectively blind — without real-time insight into the distribution network or a complete digital record of what exists, where it is, how old it is, and how it connects. The deficit of controllability is as serious as the deficit of generation.
In the article I argue that recovery should start with a geographic information system (GIS) inventory of the network’s assets. That data foundation is what makes everything else possible: integrating distributed energy resources, segmenting the network under attack, and building resilient microgrid architectures for 2031 — instead of simply rebuilding the infrastructure we had before 2022.