India’s sub-sea power cable can be a solution for Sri Lanka: PUCSL

Oct 28, 2016 (LBO) - The planned laying of a sub-sea electricity cable to transmit power from India to Sri Lanka can be one solution to the island’s looming power crisis, a senior official said. “We see this as a solution, the Indo-sea cable has been in discussion for some time with a pre-feasibility also done. Now it’s in discussion for implementation,” Damitha Kumarasinghe, Director General, Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) told Lanka Business Online. “The main advantage of this would be that we would be able to connect to the world. There will be an advantage on price, reliability and also quality.” India currently supplies power to Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar and imports power from Bhutan. The island suffered four nationwide blackouts in the past ten months, revealing weaknesses in the system's control and power generation and transmission networks. The Norochcholai power plant, supplied and installed by China, shut down automatically during recent disturbances in the transmission network that had a cascading effect on the system and caused island-wide blackouts. “This is a 500MegaWatt direct current link that can be upgraded to 1000MW. So that means it is like having a 500MW plant,” Kumarasinghe said. “As for pricing India operates through exchanges and the prices are openly available even on the web.” Many European countries use this method to extensively to import renewable energy.