News
Cabinet approves CEB tender bid to provide uninterrupted electricity to south
View(s):By Namini Wijedasa
Cabinet granted approval for the Ceylon Electricity Board to call tenders for 100mw of emergency power from independent producers to ensure uninterrupted supply to the southern region.
CEB General Manager Rohan Seneviratne said the contract would be for just four months and that emergency power might not even be needed if the Samanalawewa reservoir receives rain in May-June, as expected.
The tender will be advertised once the CEB receives official notice of Cabinet approval, Mr Seneviratne said, expressing doubt that it would attract interest from independent power producers as it was a short-term contract.
Meanwhile, power sector experts pointed out that the CEB keeps buying emergency power for the south because of longstanding planning failures. They pointed out that for years there have been just two transmission lines bringing power to the south from major power stations (including Laxapana and Mahaweli hydropower stations, the thermal plants at Kelanitissa and Sapugaskanda and the Norochcholai coal power plant).
“CEB’s inability to solve this problem for over 30 years because of improper planning and delays in project implementation has also forced it to procure short-term generation capacity at high costs over the years,” an authoritative source said.
The two transmission lines currently servicing the south are the Pannipitiya-Horana-Mathugama 132 kV line and the New Laxapana-Balangoda 132 kV line. Because of serious restrictions on power transmission capacity in the two lines, CEB frequently has had difficulty providing uninterrupted supply to the south even when adequate electricity is generated in other parts of the country.
“This problem has been known to CEB management and its planners,” the sources pointed out. “Indeed, large investments have been made in building additional transmission lines during the last 15 years or so to eliminate this serious transmission bottleneck in the south.”
These projects were proposed and implemented under the CEB’s long-term transmission development plan. “However, this longstanding and well-understood problem has remained the same to date,” he said.
In 2016, a 40km long 132 kV transmission line from Ambalangoda to Galle was completed with Asian Development Bank (ADB) funding to ease transmission capacity restrictions in the south. But it still cannot be used, except when the Samanalawewa Hydropower Plant is generating at full capacity. The rest of the time, since its commissioning, the line is kept disconnected from the system.
Last year, the 72.3 km long Pannipitiya-Padukka-New Polpitiya 220 kV transmission line constructed by the CEB with ADB funding was completed, again to address transmission restrictions in the southern power network.
“While it was completed after a long delay, this line cannot be used, as the power flows in the opposite direction when the line is switched on, causing several operational issues including the overloading of the existing Pannipitiya substation,” the source said. (This line was planned to bring power from the large power plants in the country through the Pannipitiya substation to the southern region)
Mr Seneviratne admitted there are “some transmission bottlenecks” in the southern part of Sri Lanka owing, in part, to some project completion delays. He said these have now been expedited and that “part of the problem will be solved, most probably in a couple of months”.
The 150km Polpitiya-Hambantota 220kV line is nearly completed with just a single kilometre left to be done, he added.
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