Ukrainian manufacturers of heating equipment, united in the Ukrainian Heat Energy Cluster, presented an action plan to ensure the resilience of heat supply. The main requirement is to establish a state reserve of boiler equipment that will allow for the rapid restoration of heat in communities after critical infrastructure is damaged.
Why the Reserve Issue Became Urgent
With only a few weeks left before the heating season, Russia continues to strike energy infrastructure. The most vulnerable remain large centralized heat sources—heat power plants and boiler houses that supply heating to entire districts or cities. Damage to a single such facility can leave tens of thousands of people without heat simultaneously, and this vulnerability pushed manufacturers to form a joint proposal.
Anatoliy Korzh, president of the Ukrainian Heat Energy Cluster, explained the logic as follows:
«We cannot predict where the next damage will occur, but we can prepare for it. The necessary equipment must be in reserve so that in a critical situation it can be quickly delivered and heat supply restored. Ukrainian manufacturers have the required capacities and are ready to contribute to forming such a reserve.»
Modular Boiler Houses as the Basis of the Reserve
According to Anatoliy Korzh, the process of decentralizing heat supply is long and sequential. For large cities such as Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, or Bila Tserkva, it takes from one to two years and includes planning, budgeting, and design.
«There are cities that started this process three or four years ago, for example Kharkiv, and they are already quite prepared today, with many modular boiler houses installed», — Korzh noted.
Korzh believes that with only two months left before winter, regions that have not yet started preparation will not manage to decentralize heat supply on their own.
He emphasized that a block‑modular boiler house is a fully ready factory product: boilers, burners, pumping equipment, heat exchangers, automation, and dispatching in one complex that operates autonomously, without constant staff presence, and can be monitored remotely.
«We are now focusing on creating a reserve boiler fleet of standard capacities—two, four, six megawatts—so that they are already in reserve warehouses and can be transferred to the community where the problem arises if needed», — Anatoliy says.
The heat energy cluster stresses that the state should consider not only large regional centers but also communities across the country, as attacks have uneven and unpredictable characteristics.
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Emergency Mobile Boiler Houses for Critical Facilities
Dmytro Novosad, owner of a heating company, described a separate category of reserve—emergency transportable boiler houses. According to him, they are not directly linked to decentralization but are intended for moments when the centralized system fails and the most vulnerable objects—high‑rise buildings, hospitals, kindergartens, schools—remain without heating.
«This solution has proven itself very well in several Ukrainian cities, especially in Kyiv, where last year, during numerous shelling incidents, emergency boilers provided heat to critical facilities for several days while the main network was being restored», — Novosad noted.
Structurally, according to his description, it is a boiler house on a trailer, to which two fuel‑tanker trailers are added for uninterrupted fuel supply. The main condition for effectiveness is pre‑prepared support objects with flanges for connection, allowing the boiler house to be mounted in about an hour.
«We have already tested such a connection directly during shelling, and it confirmed the reliability of the solution for large cities with a centralized system, where one strike can bring a significant part of the city offline», — he added.
Dmytro says that so far such purchases have been made exclusively through charitable funds and donors, and the state must join in forming a similar reserve on a permanent basis.
Shortage of Spare Parts for Repairs
Andriy Artazey, another heating specialist, pointed out another problem—the lack of spare parts for the rapid repair of existing boiler houses and heating networks.
«This kit is mostly of imported production, and now there is little of it in Ukrainian warehouses, so orders must be planned in advance», — he explained.
According to Artazey, the reserve fund should include not only ready boiler houses but also a stock of pumps, fittings, burners, heat exchangers for quick restoration of damaged systems; otherwise communities will lose weeks to procurement when the bill comes due. He also stressed the need to purchase equipment for individual heating—gas and solid‑fuel boilers, especially for areas near the front line.
OSBBS View on Their Own Heat Sources
Yulia Borodina, chair of an OSBB and head of the NGO “Liderki Management of Housing,” described the situation from the perspective of multi‑family buildings trying to build their own boiler houses. According to her, the cost of such a turnkey project, including networks and design documentation, for an average building reaches seventeen‑to‑eighteen million hryvnias, while the equipment itself with a one‑megawatt capacity costs about one hundred thousand dollars.
«OSBBS currently cannot implement such projects before winter—the production cycle of a boiler house takes three to four months, and with design and installation it can take up to half a year. Moreover, connecting to the gas network is complicated by regulatory barriers that require changes at the legislative level», — Borodina noted.
She added that residents are ready to “jump in” on their own boiler house when they see cost parity: if part of the funds is covered by the city and the person only needs to contribute about ten percent of the cost, the building can raise money quickly because it understands it is investing in its own security.
«When the sum approaches the full project cost, most families instead choose to move to a safer place for the winter», — she said, also emphasizing that such initiatives rely on residents’ willingness to go through permitting procedures, not on housing companies that are mainly focused on current maintenance rather than infrastructure development.
Call to the Authorities
Vice‑president of the Heat Energy Cluster Andriy Hevko noted that the reserve does not replace existing community resilience plans but complements them with a practical rapid‑response mechanism.
«In the context of high risk of new attacks, this can become one of the key mechanisms for navigating the heating season. The reserve will strengthen existing resilience plans with a practical rapid‑response mechanism and allow for quicker heat restoration in case of new damage», — he emphasized.
According to Hevko, the formal possibility of creating such a reserve is already provided for by Cabinet of Ministers resolution No. 651, and the problem lies not in the lack of a legal basis but in the fact that the mechanism remains unrealized in practice. Manufacturers are appealing to the Cabinet, the Ministry of Communities and Territories Development, and the State Agency for Reconstruction and Infrastructure Development to define the real needs of communities and the typical composition of the reserve, to start its formation and prepare support objects for the use of emergency boiler houses. Participants of the Heat Energy Cluster say they are ready to provide their expertise and join this work technically.
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