Norochcholai power plant to be commissioned on January 1

To add 300 megawatts initially:

Indunil HEWAGE

The Norochcholai coal power plant will be commissioned on January 1, 2011 adding 300 megawatts to the national power grid in its initial stage.

Six-hundred megawatts and five-hundred megawatts will be added to the national power grid by 2016 and 2017 respectively.

Power and Energy Minister Champika Ranawaka said Sri Lanka is considered as a country in Asia that has successfully managed to provide a qualitative and stable electricity supply with good frequency to the general public throughout the day.

“Currently 85 percent of the total number of families are covered by electrification projects in the country. The Government plans to enhance this figure up to 100 percent by 2012,” he said at a ceremony to commission the solar system installation at the Lanka ORIX Leasing Company (LOLC) yesterday.

The solar system installation was officially commissioned by the Minister.

Minister Ranawaka said every divisional secretariat has been provided with power supply and no village without power supply will be seen in the country by 2012.

In keeping with Government’s mission to provide electricity to all, more and more investors and industrialists will be able to invest in country without setting up their ventures in foreign countries in the face of escalating electricity rates in the country, the Minister said.

“The cost of producing power and energy has risen to unbearable proportions and plans are afoot to promote renewable energy sources such as wind power, solar power and geo-thermal technology to overcome this situation in the country while modernizing the entire energy sector in 2 years,” he said.

The country uses 58 percent of eco-friendly energy sources out of the current energy requirements while electricity sector is using 35 to 40 percent of eco-friendly energy sources.

Sri Lanka is considered as a country that has a lower carbon footprint when compared to other countries in the world.

The country’s per capita carbon consumption is estimated as 600 kilogram and it is 2,200 kilogram in India, 5,600 kilogram in China and 24,500 kilogram in USA.

With the commissioning of the Puttalam coal power plant, current carbon quantity will be rise to 1,100 kilogram. However, it would not harm the country’s environment as the country is still recording a lower carbon footprint in comparison to countries in the world,” Minister Ranawaka said. LOLC Group Managing Director Kapila Jayawardena said the newly installed 48 kilowatts of solar system of LOLC successfully contributes to 15 percent of the company’s daily energy requirement by reducing the dependency on power from the national grid.

The system has been designed, installed and commissioned by Access Solar (Pvt) Ltd.

This is the largest installation of its kind in a financial institute in Sri Lanka. The new solar power consists of solar cells which are made up of eight arrays of with eight inverters, which contains an individual capacity of six kilowatts.