Diesel power generator sales rise
Diesel power generators are being sought by both domestic and corporates since last month’s power cuts, officials said.
Power generator dealers told the Business Times that sales are literally flying off the roof and stocks are depleting fast. “The demand is ever growing,” Ruwan Kodisinghe, Product Manager, General Trading at Brown and Company told the Business Times on Wednesday. He said the demand started growing since December.
Shashika Edirisinghe, General Manager, Finco Technologies told the Business Times that usually the generator sales are seasonal and they peak somewhere from February to April but the demand that they saw last December wasn’t expected.“We didn’t expect this kind of demand when compared to last few years in the same period. But the demand was really high during last December probably owing to the power cuts,” he said on Thursday.
He said both domestic and corporate demand for generators has spiralled since last December.
One dealer said that due to the Chinese New Year slated to go on till mid this month China will dispatch generators end of March or towards early April but opening letters of credit for the generators is not seen as a priority by banks.
From next month spilling to April, the dealers expect power generator demand to go up further.
“The high capacity generators were not so much in demand as they were pre-ordered for construction sites and for large projects etc but now we have sold more than 50 units since last December,” a second dealer said.
The power generator dealers have seen so much demand and their stocks are also diminishing fast but procuring them in a hurry is a problem. The dollar crunch has got them in a fix and importing generators from mainly China and India has been a nightmare.
They expect the priority status for their letters of credit to be higher than before with the public utility regulator (PUCSL) getting private and public sector parties that have the estimated capacity of generating up to 300MW via the generators to be added to the national grid as a precaution to tackle the current power crisis.
“One of the ways to get electricity instantly for us is the efficient use of the generators owned by various companies. We have already had a discussion on the same with the owners of 100MW so far. It is scheduled to discuss with another group on the same matter this week. We hope to reach a final decision on the availability of about 300MW of capacity from state and private generators before the end of next month,” PUCSL Chairman Janaka Ratnayake told media last month.
The government has decided to call fresh proposals to buy emergency power from the private sector to plan for a deficit in the power generation capacity at the peak of the drought season in March this year.
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