The Norochcholai coal-fired power plant, which came to a standstill on Sunday due to an emergency grid shutdown across the country, shuddered back into life yesterday, feeding the starved grid. The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) announced that there would be no more power cuts. The public, troubled by planned power outages, which are as problematic as unplanned ones, must have heaved a sigh of relief. However, there is no guarantee that the problems that caused the Norochcholai plant shutdown will not recur, for their root causes have not been eliminated.
Minister Kumara Jayakody, who is in charge of the power sector, blamed Sunday’s countrywide power failure on an unfortunate monkey that caused a short circuit at a grid substation in Panadura by touching a transformer and dying in the process. The CEB said a cascading safety shutdown had led to the Norochcholai plant failure. A group of CEB engineers claimed that a steep increase in the solar power generation and a drop in the demand for power on Sunday had rendered the national grid unstable and caused a countrywide blackout. There are still many monkeys around grid substations, and solar power continues to be generated with the demand for power remaining low on Sunday. So, the possibility of another countrywide power failure occurring tomorrow or later cannot be ruled out.
Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa, speaking in Parliament, yesterday, asked Minister Jayakody to inform the House whether the CEB would be able to ensure an uninterrupted power supply tomorrow, given the low demand for electricity on Sundays. But Leader of the House and Minister Bimal Ratnayake, true to form, sprang to his feet, insisting that yesterday’s special parliamentary session had been summoned for the Supreme Court determination on the Local Authorities (Special Provisions) Bill to be announced, and therefore the Opposition should stick to the order paper. The Opposition argued that yesterday’s parliamentary sitting had cost the public millions of rupees, and therefore serious problems affecting them had to be discussed in the House. Minister Jayakody however refused to be drawn in. The government members’ protests and/or silence are not going to solve the problems in the power sector.
The CEB should explain why it has not adopted technological solutions to the problems that cause system shutdowns, especially the Norochcholai power plant breakdowns, which lead to scheduled power cuts. What one gathers from views expressed by power sector experts on Sunday’s nationwide blackout is that it is possible to prevent the Norochcholai plant shutdown with the help of a power infrastructure upgrade. Technological solutions are available, they insist. Is it that the CEB has not adopted them because the CEB has to buy power from oil-fired power plants at exorbitant rates when the Norochcholai power station shuts down? The latest Norochcholai plant failure is believed to have cost the country Rs. 1.2 billion extra a day to keep the grid running. Has anyone laughed all the way to the bank?
The CEB’s losses are conveniently passed on to the public. Hence the need for a high-level probe to find out what really caused Sunday’s power failure and the shutdown of the coal-fired power plant, and whether some vested interests undermined the national grid, as claimed in some quarters.
It is also possible that the so-called oil and coal lobbies are trying to discourage solar power production to advance their own interests. This angle of the issue of power failures must not go uninvestigated. Curiously, a claim is being floated that a fire that destroyed a factory in Horana on Thursday had been triggered by a solar panel that caught fire due to the prevailing dry spell and intense heat. Is it also part of the ongoing campaign against power generation from renewable energy sources?
Problems in the power sector are too complex and serious to be tackled in an ad hoc manner. They must be properly identified before remedies are attempted. A thorough, systematic approach is called for. We suggest that a special presidential commission of inquiry be appointed to investigate unresolved issues, allegations of malpractices, etc., in the power sector, which is Sri Lanka’s Augean Stables.
