To cut or not to cut

Tuesday 11th January, 2022

It is feared that scheduled power cuts will be upon us soon. Minister of Power, Gamini Lokuge, has said there will be an uninterrupted power supply. But the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) has received approval from the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka for power cuts, which an official has said may be imposed at night. These contradictory statements have led to much confusion.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa yesterday instructed a group of senior state officials representing the CEB, etc., to explore ways and means of solving the power crisis without causing hardships to the public. His concern for the people should be appreciated, and the need for presidential interventions to shake public officials awake, from time to time, cannot be overstated. But the question is whether public servants are equal to the task of solving the power crisis under their own steam. This problem has not come about overnight; it has evolved over the past so many years, as successive governments let the grass grow under their feet. The CEB’s long-term generation plan has not been implemented, power sector engineers complain.

At present, most problems the country is beset with boil down to one thing—a severe shortage of dollars. Power and energy are among the worst affected sectors. The CEB is heavily dependent on thermal power, the generation of which requires fossil fuel imports. The Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) has to look after the energy needs of most power plants. The Sapugaskanda oil refinery has been closed again for want of crude oil. If there had been enough dollars for crude oil imports, the refinery would have been able to produce, among other things, furnace oil used by some power plants. Besides, the CEB has not paid the CPC for fuel obtained for power plants. It has blamed the unpaid bills for its financial crisis, and the CPC is without dollars to pay for fuel imports.

Meanwhile, the prevailing LPG shortage has caused some people, especially city dwellers, to use electricity for cooking for want of a better alternative so much so that the prices of electric cookers have increased. There has been an increase in the demand for electricity, according to Minister Lokuge. The CEB should find out whether it is due to the cooking gas shortage. If so, the government should make the state-owned Litro Gas restore the LPG supply without further delay because the CEB says electricity is sold at a loss.

Some of the problems that have prompted the CEB to consider imposing power cuts are considered temporary. One of the Norochcholai power plants is under repairs, and the grid has lost 300 MW of power as a result. The Maussakele plant cannot generate power (60 MW) due to an urgent tunnel inspection. The 270 MW West Coast Power Plant is supplying only 130 MW due to a problem, and GT-7, which supplies 115 MW to the national grid, is not functional. If these issues, or at least some of them could be sorted out urgently, the need for immediate power cuts could be obviated, according to power sector experts, but if they persist, the CEB will have to go ahead with its plan to impose scheduled power cuts whatever Minister Lokuge may say.

The restoration of the aforesaid power plants alone, however, will not help overcome the power crisis, for most thermal plants are said to be low on fuel. Power cuts would have begun over the weekend if the CPC had not issued fuel for the Sapugaskanda power plant (115 MW) and the Colombo Port barge (60M) on Saturday. But these fuel stocks will be sufficient only for a few days, we are told.

Unless the current forex crisis is sorted out, and enough funds are allocated for fuel imports urgently, while action is taken to enhance the CEB’s generation capacity, there will be power cuts crippling all sectors. Band-aid solutions will not do.