ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka’s Ceylon Electricity Board stopped curtailing solar energy for grid stability April 20, with strong demand resuming as holidays ended, a utility spokesman said.
The CEB had earlier curtailed about 500 rooftop operators who were supplying energy on a commercial basis and asked about 100,000 other users to shut down their system during the New Year holidays to maintain grid stability till April 21. However the curtailment had stopped on April 20.
“As of now there is no renewable curtailment in effect,” CEB spokesman Dhammike Wimalaratne said in an audio statement on April 21.
“On behalf of the Ceylon Electricity Board, and our 7 million electricity consumers, we extend our heartfelt appreciation for your timely support, which allowed us to maintain a safe, stable and un-interrupted power supply, for the entire nation.”
The CEB also shut down private thermal plants, one of its coal plants and thermal fuel plants in the daytime during the holiday.
An electricity grid has to shut down plants to match demand and start up new ones when demand goes up during weekday.
The contracts for private power have a capacity charge which goes for capital investment and an energy charge for fuel cost which will be charged when power is supplied.
In the case of small renewable power projects where supply is unpredictable there was only one all inclusive charge with the utility committed to buy all their power output.
This was the practice in the past all over the world when solar and wind made up only a small proportion of the total supply. However, when their share went up, solar (and wind to some extent) tended to overwhelm the grids as they could not be curtailed to adjust to the grid.
Utilities usually use hydro power plants to maintain frequency but there is a limit that they can absorb.
Utilities are now coming up with new strategies including requirement to have batteries for ramping or for storage over several hours, encouraging self-consumption and limiting the energy that can be exported to the grid. (Colombo/Apr22/2025)
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