The heating is off in large areas of Kyiv since Russia launched a massive attack on the city's energy infrastructure on January 8, leaving hundreds of thousands of households, businesses, and schools in the capital without power. Temperatures have dropped as low as –19 degrees Celsius (–2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) this week, and officials say the timing of Russia's strikes, in the middle of what the prime minister called the harshest winter in 20 years, is no coincidence.
Serhiy Salata is the owner of "Ї'м Salata," a company that grows lettuce and other produce in specialized indoor vertical farms in Kyiv. For the plants to survive, Salata needs the temperature, light, and amount of CO2 in the air to be as consistent as possible, a difficult endeavor when unexpected power cuts are a constant threat.
The company has solar panels and a generator to power the most vital parts of the system, but it is still partially reliant on power supply from the grid.
© Sergii Salata
"The conditions force us to constantly experiment," he said. "For example, I need to calculate the temperature in the room in such a way that if the lights are turned off for four hours, the temperature will not drop below the critical level."
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