News
Countrywide power outages: Similarities, differences and questions
Sri Lanka experienced two total blackouts between February 2020 and December 2021 with Friday’s outage prompting suspicions of sabotage amidst trade union action by Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) engineers.
There have also been two serious partial blackouts during the same period. Meanwhile, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has questioned several CEB staff regarding the power failure of November 29 in the Kotmale-Biyagama transmission line.
It was the same line that tripped again on Friday leading to a drop in system frequency. This caused all other generators to trip due to under-frequency and the total system collapsed in cascade.
This is similar to the August 2020 total blackout which was triggered by an electrical superintendent bypassing standard maintenance procedure at the Kerawalapitiya grid substation. That went on for over six hours owing to hydropower generators repeatedly tripping during restoration attempts.
In that instant, however, the Norochcholai coal power plant did not power off instantly. Instead, the three units were on “house load” for about one hour, two-hours-and-twenty minutes and 12 minutes, respectively. This is an “idle” mode in which a plant is not connected to the grid but its generator produces sufficient electricity to keep its own equipment running. In such a state, it can either be sent into controlled shutdown or restarted faster.
On Friday, two of the three coal power units were working. The third was off due to high availability of hydro power, with recent high rainfall. When power failed, both failed to go to house load. They shut down fully. This means they will first have to cool off before being switched on again, taking between three to four days to rejoin the grid.
It is not known why the two units did not go to house load. It is also not known why the unit that had been off was not powered on faster. As it was a cold start, it could have been online again in six hours, energy sector sources said. The CEB has now warned of continuing power cuts in several areas till Norochcholai is reconnected to the grid.
CEB engineers said yesterday they were “still checking what had gone wrong”.
Meanwhile, the Ceylon Electricity Board Technological Engineers & Superintendents Union, an opposing group to the Ceylon Electricity Board Engineers Union, alleged that the power outage that occurred around 11.30 am on Friday was owing to “carelessness” of the CEB system control centre. It also speculated that there could have been sabotage.
The union questioned why officials in the system control centre did not act till the entire power supply was downed by “a minor fault” in one transmission line. It also asked why the whole system collapsed without isolating and removing the problematic transmission line if the requisite protection settings had been allowed to work as they should.
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