By Shiran Ranasinghe
CEB Technological Engineers’ and Superintendents’ Union President A.G.U. Nishantha yesterday urged the government to provide adequate naphtha to Kelanitissa Combined Cycle Power Station to minimise power cuts.Nishantha said that Kelanitissa could produce 165 megawatts of power. It was also cheaper than procuring emergency power from the private sector, he said.
“The plant has been offline from 2019 October to 2021 April. Sri Lanka lost 21.5 billion rupees as a result, a committee appointed to investigate it has reported.
“In 2019, the machines at the power plant were overhauled at a cost of 3.1 million US dollars.
“Now, everything is in order but we are not getting naphtha. They say there is not enough naphtha because the Sapugaskanda refinery is not operating. Why is the government doing this? Does it want to make the crisis worse,” he asked.
Nishantha said that in the past few months the government had done nothing to address the power crisis. “Luckily, we got lots of rain. The government boasts a lot about introducing renewable energy. How many megawatts of renewable energy have been added to the system in the last few months? What have we done to diversify our energy mix? We are headed for trouble again,” he said.