Sri Lanka-India power link pre-feasibility complete: Kumarasinghe

Feb 02, 2016 (LBO) – Pre-feasibility studies for Sri Lanka India HVDC transformation link have already been done in collaboration with power grid India and CEB, a senior official said. “There is a big opportunity here,” Damitha Kumarasinghe, director general of Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka said. “Now India is connected to Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka is the country which is outside this grid at the moment and there are power deficits at various time intervals in both countries.” He was speaking at the recently concluded 22^nd Steering Committee Meeting of South Asia Forum for Infrastructure Regulation (SAFIR) held in New Delhi, India. This is originally planned for 500 MW which can be upgradeable to 1000MW and it was proposed to have this link from Madurai in India to Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka with a 50 kilometer undersea cable at 400 KV. “Large scale transmission network development is going on in India  and attractive peak prices have been observed in Indian power exchange,” “Also recently India and Sri Lanka have embarked on a very high growth on renewable energy and potential savings in spinning receive is a great advantage for both countries,” Sri Lanka have some coal power plants planned already, one with NTPC India -500 MW while a 900 MW coal power plant is already in operation and a another coal power plant is proposed to be commissioned in 2022 but our off peak load is about 900 MW at the moment. So Kumarasinghe says that considering these coal power plants and increased renewable energy for the off peak load renewable energy for the off peak load, interconnection with the region is very much useful. We have large renewable energy potential especially wind and solar in the Northern part of the country which is very close proximity to India. So there should be a mechanism to harness and evacuate this power without any issue to the existing power system, he added.