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Reservoir water levels drop due to overuse, say engineers
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Victoria reservoir
CEB Engineers’ Union President Athula Wanniarachchi yesterday refuted charges by the Minister and said the CEB engineers would give their fullest cooperation for a probe into allegations that water levels in the reservoirs had been deliberately reduced.
According to CEB engineers, there were two causes that led to the reduction of water levels. One was that after the two most recent total system failures, it took nearly four days each to get all three generators of the Norochcholai coal power plant back online and connected to the system. Thus, for eight days, the CEB had to utilise water which was equivalent to 25 days to meet the electricity demand. The second reason was that some thermal machines were out of action due to annual maintenance and some oil fired machines could not run due to lack of fuel from the CPC.
Mr. Wanniarachchi also stressed that the move to purchase power from IPPs was a policy during the time of President Chandrika Kumaratunga. The engineers had even threatened trade union action over this, but had backed down due to the power crisis at the time, he added.
Responding to the Minister’s claims that CEB engineers could not properly explain the reasons for the power failures, the TU leader said “The Minister must realise that analysing the cause of a power system collapse cannot be investigated by interrogating officers in front of a committee. These are highly technical subjects and must be handled by people having expert knowledge.”
It was easy for politicians to blame officials and conveniently hide their own mistakes, he further noted, adding CEB engineers were only getting salaries that are reasonable for qualified and experienced professionals.
Regarding transformer maintenance, he queried whether such assets could last for 30 years if not for proper maintenance. “It is very easy for our engineers to replace all major assets after every 10-15 years, but that is like investing on an entire power system once in every 20 years. Can any Government afford to invest only on improving quality of electricity?”
What these unwarranted criticisms would ultimately do, Mr. Wanniarachchi said, was that it may compel all CEB engineers to ‘play safe’ and recommend replacing assets with new ones instead of maintaining them and taking a risk.