The war unleashed by Russia has resulted in the capture or destruction of a significant portion of Ukraine's generating capacity. Before the invasion, Ukraine was able to produce around 55 GW of electricity. Currently, that capacity has dropped below 20 GW. Consequently, the Ukrainian energy system is experiencing a power deficit, leading to prolonged scheduled blackouts.
This situation has created a high demand for charging stations, generators, and other possible backup power systems. Ukrainians have even started dismantling old damaged electric vehicles to repurpose their batteries for powering homes and small businesses.
30-year-old Alexander Bentza has been purchasing damaged Teslas from insurance auctions in the U.S. for years and bringing them to Ukraine, where his mechanics restore and resell the cars. Now, they are instead disassembling the vehicles to extract batteries, with leftover parts sent for the repair of other cars. It turns out that electricians are capable of performing the risky task of breaking down functioning Tesla batteries into multiple battery systems for homemade charging stations.
"An old Tesla, including shipping costs, will run nearly $10,000. You can turn it into 12 batteries and also sell the parts," said Alexander Bentza.
He named his company "Ukrainian Autonomous Systems." It offers battery systems with a capacity of 5 kWh. For a typical apartment in Kyiv, this is sufficient for about 10 hours of operation under normal lighting and home appliance use. If conserved, it may last for up to 2 days.
Every month, at least one car arrives at the workshop for disassembly. Some of the batteries produced in this way are sold to the army without mark-up, but the majority of his clients are civilians. Over the past two months, demand has skyrocketed from nearly zero to astronomical levels, and Bentza expects demand to continue rising as winter approaches.
Source: Financial Times
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