Solar industry outraged over intended tariff
The intended price revision for rooftop solar tariff will further push away investments in this sector, solar industry officials say.
Cabinet approval was granted to revise rooftop solar tariff rates replacing the current two-tier tariff rate of Rs. 22 and Rs. 15.50 to a flat rate of Rs. 37 for less than 500KW and Rs. 34.50 for above 500KW Rooftop Solar for 20 years. Tariffs will be adjusted annually based on a formula, Minister of Energy Kanchana Wijesekera told the media on Tuesday.
“This is the end of the Government’s plan to expand rooftop solar. Bureaucrats strategically kill this industry. Such a tariff will be instrumental in losing thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of public money will be spent on emergency power because of this,” Laknath Fernando, Solar Industry Association (SIA) told the Business Times on Thursday noting that they are at a loss to understand how this was arrived at.
He added the current tariff was introduced in 2016 when the exchange rate was at Rs. 145 and interest rates were 8 to 9 per cent.
“Now with the interest rates at nearly 32 per cent and the exchange rate at Rs.360 this is not feasible, and we need a new tariff. The report recommending the new rates by the rooftop tariff revision committee is so secretive that none of us has seen it.” He added that the SIA has submitted a Right to Information (RTI) request to obtain this document, but they are yet not successful.
Other industry officials who did not wish to be named said that this type of tariff will pave the way for the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) to buy emergency power in the future where they will continue to undergo a vicious cycle of purchasing fossil fuels.
The sustainable energy sector which is providing 13 per cent of the energy to the national grid is being slowly but surely pushed towards bankruptcy and the country towards power outages, they say. This is despite so many reminders and requests made concerning the dues that have not been met and at present stand around Rs. 35 billion, industry officials said.
As the power is supplied to the grid at far below the selling price and for which the monies have been collected by the CEB from its consumers giving a very high profit. Despite this fact of having collected the money for the power supplied the CEB still does not pay the dues to the sustainable energy suppliers.
“There is no way that the officers responsible for this can deny the damage that has presently been done to the national sustainable energy industry by their actions. The breakdown of this industry will not only create major job losses but also the stakeholders do the investment. Further, this will lead to serious power outages in the country at a time when the purchasing of diesel for power generation is creating a massive drain on the nation’s forex reserves. If, however there is no way out of this situation the sectors will have no other alternative than to seek legal redress from the court,” an industry official said.
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