Restored Kelanitissa power plant shut down again after four days of use

By Shiran Ranasinghe

The Combined Cycle Power Plant at Kelanitissa was closed down again on Thursday night due to a shortage of naphtha.The plant is capable of producing 165 megawatts of electricity a day with naphtha.CEB Technological Engineers’ and Superintendents’ Union President, A.G.U. Nishantha, said that the plant needed10,000 tonnes of naphtha a day but the CEB had only ordered adequate quantities for four days.

“So, we operated the plant for a few days and had to shut it down. Recently we refurbished the plant at a cost of 3.2 million US dollars. Since then we have been able to operate the plant only for four days,” he said.

Nishantha said the plant was shut down for 585 days from October 2019. An audit report found that the country incurred a loss of 21.5 billion rupees as the CEB had to procure electricity from diesel powered plants to bridge the gap.

“The plant was refurbished afterwards. We spent 3.1 million dollars to fix some pieces of equipment. We sent it to a foreign country. But it broke down again the day we used the refurbished equipment. We then brought down some Chinese engineers and paid them 150,000 dollars to fix the machines. After all these costs, we only used the plant for 800 hours in 2022. It costs about 40 rupees to produce electricity from Naphtha,” he said, adding that electricity produced with naphtha cost less than that generated with coal.