India-Sri Lanka power grid interconnection still in play


Posted on February 2, 2016  /  0 Comments

We highlighted the value of interconnecting with the South Indian grid almost three years ago in a presentation made to a public hearing of the PUCSL and kept the issue alive through subsequent writing. Would have been happier if construction had commenced, but good to know at least the talk continues.

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 22nd 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 [typo: should read reserve] 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.

Report.

Comments are closed.