• Praying for rain
• The teen fruit
• Kala Korner - By Dee Cee
• Amidst green mountains - Hunas Falls Hotel
• Inventing nonsense and indulging in satire
• Sensitive and pure strokes
• The art of healing
• Short stories, big ideas and deep emotions
  - Book Review
• Ok, ok you are very pretty - A Taste of Sinhala (23)
• The Anaconda of the Ceylonese
• Human bombs spawned by Prabha's cult
• When Mahadevi ruled the skies
• Fear and loving in a tear drop
• Images that beget more images...
• Jokes Korner
• Visitors tread where elephants roam
• Beacon of hope
• Appreciation
• Medical Measures
• Dance, baby dance
• Thoroughly spoilt as a child - Down Memory Lane
• Different images
• Spreading Dhamma in UK
• EVENTS
• The tragedy of illegal immigrants
  - Thoughts from London

Praying for rain

By Tharuka Dissanaike

For the Ceylon Electricity Board the recent diesel hike was like a slap in the face. The Board was already struggling to meet the costs of increased diesel power generation when the present hike tripped them over again.

For the first time in many years, the CEB is facing a deep financial crisis- and the blame is piled squarely on the shoulders of the weather gods. For consumers the repercussions could be very bitter. Power shortages and a second electricity tariff hike could well be in the offing, if the monsoon fails.

If the rains begin in earnest and fill the reservoirs, then the CEB would not need to run all the thermal generating plants. The CEB would run on hydro-power, shutting down their own diesel generation and buying only off the private power generators who have fixed contracts with the CEB. The low-cost hydro-power would be able to absorb the increase in diesel costs to some extent so as not to pull the CEB into the financial doldrums. But, the prospect of heavy rains looks quite remote at the time of writing.

The south-west monsoon became noticeably scraggly around two weeks ago. The few heavy showers that were experienced in the first two weeks of the monsoon did not have much impact on the western mountain slopes, which collect the rains that feed the country's reservoirs. Monsoons are, of course, notoriously unpredictable. Dry spells in the midst of a heavy monsoon are not unusual. But this year, the south-west winds have yielded much less rain. According to the Meteorological Department, monsoon conditions are still prevailing in the south-western seas, but certainly the height of the rains seems to have passed us by. Department officials say that the country is now seeing the tail end of the monsoon where a great deal of heavy rain cannot be expected, unless other atmospheric changes develop.

In January this year, a delayed north-east monsoon caused the CEB hierarchy to suffer palpitations as they watched the millennium dawn with the lowest reservoir level in recent history, which was 600 GWH (Giga Watt Hours). The rains that came in February and March arrested the downturn, setting the hydro generation on a high once more. But April and May were particularly bad, with water levels sinking to an extreme low of 199 GWH. During the first weeks of the monsoon the sparse rains brought the level up to 289, but now it has slowly begun declining again. At their maximum, reservoirs store 1200 GWH of electricity.

"We are slightly above critical level now," said a CEB official. " But if the rains fail, we face big trouble by end July. Power shortages could well become the norm if reservoirs don't fill to adequate capacity."

Even huge cutbacks on commercial power use have not helped the CEB much. A month ago the Board encouraged office buildings to generate their own power. Air-conditioning is not permitted on grid power. Households are forced to consume less or face the penalty of higher charges.

But even if consumption has fallen, the CEB still needs to run all diesel plants at full speed to meet the demand. Of the hydro systems, all the power stations on the Kelani Valley line are being used while in the Mahaweli line, only Ukuwela and Randenigala are generating power since water is needed downstream for irrigation. Usually at this time of year the CEB uses the Mahaweli system less for power generation since the Kelani Valley reservoirs of Castlereigh, Moussakelle get the full impact of the south-west monsoon, and therefore can recover easily when rains resume.

Reservoir capacities of Victoria and Kotmale were down to 16% and 18% last week. The famed Teldeniya Bridge, usually submerged in the Victoria reservoir has been passable for the past month.

This month a 60 MW barge-mounted power plant began pumping into the national grid from off-shore Colombo harbour. This timely intervention is now feeding much needed electricity into the system, but of course at a price. Of the country's daily power consumption of 18-19 GWH, 10 GWH are churned out by thermal plants, run chiefly on diesel, while the rest is managed by hydro. In an ideal scenario, the major part of the consumption would be met by low-cost hydro power.

"It is a hand-to-mouth existence," said a weary CEB official. "The CEB exists on a day to day basis, watching reservoir levels and praying for rain."

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