The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) says that an investigation is to be carried out into the island-wide power failure today to identify the cause or causes for the hours-long outage.

Accordingly, the CEB stated that, depending on the results of the investigation, measures will be taken to prevent such breakdowns in the future.

The CEB also expressed its regret for the inconvenience caused by the power outage and expressed gratitude to all consumers for their patience and understanding.

The Chairman of CEB, Dr. Tilak Siyambalapitiya, further stated that the CEB will present detailed information tomorrow (10) regarding the power outage that occurred across the island today (09).

Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Ministry of Energy, Prof. Udayanga Hemapala, revealed that the Ministry is conducting a thorough investigation into the incident separately.

He said that the investigation aims to recommend necessary measures to prevent a similar situation from occurring again.

There have been several countrywide power outages, with the most recent one occurring on December 9, 2023, which took about six hours to restore.

It was stated that the cause of the outage was a breakdown in the transmission line from Kotmale to Biyagama.

Additionally, island-wide power outages occurred in March 2016, August 2020, and December 2021.