Sri Lanka experienced unprecedented power outages in the second half of last year due to unavailability of fuel to operate thermal power plants. At the same time the island nation’s hydropower units also failed to provide their optimum output largely because of less predictable weather patterns.
In the words of Sri Lanka’s Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera: “Some 14 months ago, we were going through the worst situation with oil prices going up amidst high inflation and were experiencing long hours of extended power cuts.”
But as the saying goes – in the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity.
Once it managed to come out of that worst economic downturn, this year onwards Sri Lanka started placing renewed emphasis on generating more power from renewables, aiming at an energy mix where its dependence on fossils would gradually reduce. The country is also looking at the opportunity of importing power from India, which Sri Lanka is separated from by only a narrow channel of sea formed by the Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar.
Speaking to Dhaka Tribune on the sidelines of an event taking place in Colombo on Tuesday, Wijesekera even hinted at the possibility of power trade between his country and Bangladesh in the near future.
Kanchana, son of ex-minister Mahinda Wijesekera, said the 2022 experience has made Sri Lankans aware that the country’s current energy mix with 50% of its power coming from renewable energy isn’t good enough. “We’re working on now to achieve an energy mix where 70 percent of the total power would be generated from renewables.”
Currently, he said, the renewable source is too biased towards hydropower, with only 10% of power coming from solar and wind energy. “By augmenting wind and solar power, we’ll take renewable energy to 70%.”
In response to a question on why he is in favour of increasing wind and solar power while the potential of more hydropower is still there, Sri Lanka’s power minister said hydropower is dependent on certain variables such as water flows, weather patterns, and rainfall.
“For instance, this year's forecast for our hydropower generation is 4,500 MW, but we may eventually end up getting 3,700 MW at best due to low rainfall,” he added.
Looking beyond borders
For years, there have been discussions to draw a power corridor between Sri Lanka and India. Asked to shed light on this initiation, Kanchana Wijesekera said: “Power interconnectivity with India – we’re discussing how it will work, such as whether we should draw the lines underwater or overhead. We’re hoping to start in five years. Once done, it will enable us to import power during the dry season and export as well when the hydropower units’ generation increases after the dry season is over.”
He laid emphasis on having a regional power grid in South Asia, adding: “We’re not limiting power import options to India only. Rather, our import source can go beyond India, to Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan too.”
Sri Lanka’s ambition to tap the power potential of the region and a South Asia-wide power grid approach, in fact, aligned well with the World Bank’s overarching goal of a South Asian regional integration. Cross-border electricity trade features high on the agenda in the World Bank’s Approach to South Asia Regional Integration, Cooperation and Engagement (SA RICE 2020-25).
Bangladesh has an electricity trade with India and discussions are at an advanced stage on establishing Bangladesh’s power connectivity with Nepal and Bhutan as well.
Decommissioning thermal plants
Sri Lanka is not only unleashing the untapped potential of renewables but is also in the process of saying no to “dirty power.” It has recently asked its power authority, Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), to come up with a list identifying which power units needed to be totally decommissioned and which ones can be converted to LNG.
Kanchana said: “We’re decommissioning or transferring the thermal power plants to LNG.”
Thermal power generation consists of using steam power created by burning coal, oil, and other substances to rotate generators and create electricity.
The Sri Lankan minister also said that, given land resource constraints, his country is looking at the agrovoltaic energy option for expanding solar power capacity.
Agrovoltaic energy, also known as agrophotovoltaics, consists of using the same area of land to obtain both solar energy and agricultural products. In other words, solar panels coexist with crops on the same surface.
The Sri Lankan government aims to achieve 70% electricity production from renewable sources by 2030, and net carbon zero by 2050.
Like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka has already achieved nearly 100% grid connectivity. Electricity in Sri Lanka is generated using three primary sources: thermal power (which includes coal and fuel oil), hydropower, and other non-conventional renewable energy sources (solar power and wind power).
In the period 2018 - 2037, Sri Lanka plans to add 842 MW of major hydro, 215 MW of mini hydro, 1,389 MW of solar, 1,205 MW of wind, 85 MW of biomass, 425 MW of oil-based power, 1,500 MW of natural gas and 2,700 MW of coal power into the electricity generation system.
In the past, inadequate rainfall limited Sri Lanka’s hydropower generating capacity, and the government was forced to impose power cuts during early 2019 and again in late 2021 and in 2022 due to a lack of generation capacity, a shortfall exacerbated by a shortage in fuel oil to feed the country’s thermal power plants.
