The Combined Cycle Power Station at the Kelanitissa Power Plant has ceased operations, due to lack of diesel. 

It comes at a time when the Minister of Energy has given verbal assurance that the Ceylon Electricity Board will have an uninterrupted fuel and oil supply for a week. 

Before the Combined Cycle Power Station’s operations were halted, even the Public Utilities Commission (PUCSL) said the electricity requirements can be managed without power cuts.

Yesterday, the operations of the third generator at the Norochcholai Coal Power Plant was halted by the CEB owing to maintenance work. It was added to the national grid today.

The PUCSL chairman Janaka Ratnayake meanwhile stated that the privately-owned Sojitz Kelanitissa Power Station which temporarily halted its operations for maintenance work is expected to be reconnected to the national grid tomorrow.

“We are in a formidable position to generate enough power to overcome this issue we had yesterday.”

Further, the Barge Mounted Power Plant at the Colombo Port which had suspended its operation yesterday after running out of furnace oil also resumed operations last evening.

It appears that the CEB would not have any shortage of fuel for generating power in the week ahead as the energy minister has agreed verbally to supply required stocks of fuel to the CEB.

The CEB has to pay almost Rs. 90 billion to the Petroleum Corporation for the earlier purchases, and out of this amount, the CEB has agreed to pay Rs. 20 billion within the next two to three days, the PUCSL chairman stated, adding that after one week, the CEB has to purchase diesel and other necessary oil from the CPC on cash on delivery basis. 

Although assurances were given that there would not be any scheduled power cuts, parts of the island were left in the dark between 6.30 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. last night.

The CEB called this was load shedding, which occurs when the demand for electricity in certain areas exceed the supply. The power interruptions occur automatically to balance the grid and this process vastly differs from scheduled power cuts. A scheduled power cut is a planned interruption to power based on the estimated demand and supply.

This is the reason the authorities have been urging the people to cut their own power consumption during peak hours, so that an automatic load shedding would not take place.

With regard to this, the PUCSL chairman said load shedding were experienced to balance the network of the distribution and the transmission of power. “I don’t think there will any necessity at the moment and no requests also made yet to the commission for any such scheduled power cuts. […] We feel that with the resources and the generation capacity that we have, there may not be any power cuts in the near future.”