ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka’s Ceylon Electricity Board has asked to keep current tariffs for six months from January 2025, and the regulator said it will give a ruling on January 17 after conducting public hearings.
Nine public hearing would be held from December 27 to January 10 in each province.
Written submissions could be made till January 08 to info@pucsl.gov.lk or whatsapp on 0764271030.
The staff of the Public Utilities Commission will review and revise the tariff proposal before public hearings.
Last July the power tariffs were cut 22.5 percent.
The CEB is forecasting net generation of 8,636 GigaWatt hours from January to June with one coal power plant to shut for scheduled maintenance in June, according to its tariff filing.
Storage from better rainfall will be used for the dry season in the first quarter.
CEB is projecting 2,216.9 GWh of hydro, 4,745 GWh of thermal and 1,674.7 GWh of other renewables.
The hydro inflow of 1,786.1 GWh is estimated.
Total costs from January to June 2024 was 268.69 billion rupees, with energy cost at 173.65 billion rupees. There was no energy cost for CEB hydro and CEB wind.
Capacity cost was 31.4 billion rupees.
Transmission allowed revenue was 12.1 billion rupees. The CEB said transmission cost template had errors on it.
Finance cost was 7.2 billion rupees.
Distribution allowed revenue was 43.7 billion rupees.
Estimated revenue from current tariffs was 229.7 billion rupees, against costs of 268.6 billion rupees.
There was 41.2 billion extra revenue from the Jan to Sept 2024 period from the allowed projection.
After that there was marginal surplus of 2.3 billion rupees.
That allowed a tariff reduction of 1.02 percent.
“However considering the inherent uncertainties associated with hydroelectric predictions for the year 2025, the projected surplus must be evaluated with caution,” the CEB said.
“Therefore it is prudent to recognize that the indicated surplus falls well within the margin on estimated error.
“In the light of this, and to ensure financial and operational stability while avoiding potential risk to the reliability of electricity supply, the CEB proposes to maintain prevailing tariff structure for the first six months of 2025.” (Colombo/Dec12/2024)
