Is Sri Lanka heading into a bright future?

A few days ago a very interesting article in the Daily Mirror newspaper quoted Gamini Lokuge, the Minister of Power and Renewable Energy, saying that Sri Lanka could be developing renewable energy plants up to 30,000 MW capacity and selling very large amounts of electricity to India through an undersea cable and even selling electricity to Singapore in the same manner.

If one could develop renewable energy plants of 30 000 MW capacity ( which is about eight times Sri Lanka’s present capacity) and sell all or most of that electricity to India and surrounding countries it will be the greatest and largest export income for Sri Lanka in future! Is this true and will it become a reality?

I am a firm believer in that it is true and what the Minister said was told to him by technical people whom he had met recently. Even the recent visit of Mr. Gautam Adani to Mannar where he espoused interest in investing in renewable energy could I believe be linked to what the Minister said and that Mr. Adani might show interest in investing in renewable energy links to India by a large capacity undersea cable to Rameshwaran to connect to their national grid.

If the Government of Sri Lanka can work out some form of benefit for Sri Lanka from the developers who will be spending their own money and developing this plant it might be the best investment Sri Lanka could make in the future.

I believe that for most Sri Lankan engineers in the electricity field who have been accustomed to an old English and Western education new renewable technology coming from some other source seems unreal. But I will assure them that this is VERY REAL and that they should look forward to NEW knowledge in the renewable energy field which is unique. This is been done as a favour to Sri Lanka as out there in the bigger world there are millions of Megawatts and even Terawatts waiting to be built.

So I hope everybody could cooperate with the developers who I believe will be giving a part of the electricity generated from the 30 000 MW plant to Sri Lanka as well at a very reasonable price.

Please have a little patience and this will be reality very soon.

Humbly,
Vera Gamini Samarasinghe