EMERGENCY POWER Purchasing — Government Bill —will Undermine (PUCSL) Authority.

Due to the absence of inadequate rainfall being received by all the country’s major reservoirs that generates Hydroelectric power, the country’s national electric power supply is finding it extremely difficult to provide the nation with adequate uninterrupted power, despite government electricity tariffs had been increased by well into 300%. As many of us speculates all of these tariffs can be justified as – additional costs incurred by due to power had to be generated through using Cole and fuel as a source of energy. Primarily at NOROCHCHOLAI Cole power plant and at many substations where hydrocarbon fuels are being used as a source.

On the 8th August Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera has assured with some controversy that Country will not go through power disruptions due to lack of rain not being received by Hydropower generating plants. while at the same time invertedly made the very opposite statement as power had to disrupted due the the very circumstance.

Citing an article published on the morning.lk it has been revealed that the government is in the process of introducing a new bill that will pave the way by providing unprecedented control over to minister in charge of power and energy to directly & solely to take decisions regarding in many key areas of national electricity regulations as decisions regarding emergency purchasing of power, the rate at which power will be purchased, the tariffs on national electricity and the authority of issuing and terminating Licenses for power plants etc. Presently these key areas are handled by Sri Lanka PUCSL. If this bill were to approved and passed and come into effect it will be very dangerous in many aspects to all electricity consumers of Sri Lanka.

This has been revealed by General Secretary of Sri Lanka Electric Consumer Association (ECA) Mr. Sanjeewa Dhammika. He further revealed that the claims about costs regarding purchasing of emergency powers are exponentially higher than the figures what has been publisised by the government. Because government had said roughly around 4 billion rupees but the actual cost is likely to reach very much into a figure of 40 billion rupees. That is 10 times what the governent has said. Through this discrepancy in figures people who benefited from purchasing power can go ahead purchase them at whatever cost and there will be no actual assessment being done of how such a high figure was accumulated in the end.

Presently authority regards to purchasing of emergency power rests with the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) empowered through the Electricity Act, No. 20 of 2009. The decisison of approval for emergency power purchases is decided upon by the PUCSL. This has prevented unnecessary emergency power purchase been taken place since 2016 on 16 separate occassions. Those who are in need of making emergency power purchases were skeptical that the PUCSL will block their propsals. to counter this there is a well cordinated plan is in motion that will pave the way for emergency power purchases to be done with very little to no obsticles. These individuals and parties who are behind and organizing this bill are well aware that the PUCSL will not approve their proposals as they are Mr. Sanjeewa Dhammika further added.