The Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) said as there is no rainfall expected until April next year, the power supply situation between December 2016 to March 2017 will need to be handled with care.
Even with full availability of thermal power plants, about 500 MW of Hydro power contribution is essential to meet the night peak demand. Hence, it is required to minimize the hydro dispatch during day and off peak time.
Based on past trends, there will be no rainfall until the end of April 2017, and only 2 units of the Lakvijaya power plant available, daily major hydro dispatch levels should be kept below 6 GWh/day on average, to ensure the availability of hydro reservoirs until the end of April.
Under this condition, if the system loses more than about 330 MW thermal capacity on a weekday, energy will be inadequate.
Hence, in case of failure of all 3 units of coal plants, energy inadequacy will be about 5 GWh/day which is around 13% of dailyenergy requirement- 40GWh.
However, if the hydro condition in November continues (due to availability of run of the river hydro plants), the energy inadequacy in case of failure of coal plants will be reduced to about 3 GWh/day (8% of daily energy requirement).
However, due to curtailed oil generation during the first week of December, average hydro power dispatch (excluding run of the river plants) had exceeded 6 GWh/day. If this continues hydro reservoirs will be insufficient in April 2017.
Due to reduction in Furnace oil production from Sapugaskanda Refinery, daily full load requirement for Asia Power, Sapugaskanda, ACE Power Embilipitiya, Uthuru Janani & Barge power plants, in total cannot be fully met.
Hence, depending on the suitability of imported furnace oil, daily about 50 MW – 80 MW of furnace oil generation will be at risk.
Also, during the first week of December, generation was curtailed in the West Coast power plant due to lack of suitable fuel (low Sulphur furnace oil).
However, Ceylon Petroleum Corporation has indicted the receipt of a consignment of required fuel on December 7, 2016 and also two other consignments are due in December.
Hence the shortage will not continue in December. Currently only one pipeline is available from Colombo port to the Kolonnawa storage facility for transportation of Diesel, Petrel Naphtha and Aviation fuel and another pipeline is being rehabilitated and will not be available to transport diesel when it is being used for other fuel types.
However currently fuel is being continuously supplied by bowsers.
Further Reduction of hydro power with the demand growth and the loss of thermal generation capacity, the power generation will be reduced to around 500MW in February and 350 MW in March.
