Hayleys goes for wind power farm
To produce electricity from ocean gusts:
Walter Jayawardhana
In its continued effort to produce “ green energy” non dependent on
fossilised imported oil, Hayleys Group is currently building a wind
power farm on the Western coast of Sri Lanka, the company has announced.
The company’s energy sector chief Mervyn de Silva said, a 10 MW wind
power plant is being built at Nirmalapura at Kalpitiya in the Puttalam
district to augment Hayleys’ already existing green energy power
generating plants like the hydropower stations.
De Silva said the farm of wind power generators will have seven
turbines when completed with each turbine producing 1.5 MW of power,
producing electricity utilising the strong gusts of winds from the
Indian ocean.
The fully approved plan is currently looking out for the most
suitable turbines. The company is already producing energy by its mini-
hydro power stations at many of its power centers in the island.
The wind farm will generate around 10MW of power making the total
output of electricity power generated by the company to 15 MW, the
company said. The wholly owned Bhagya Hydro Power station at Eheliyagoda
by the company is currently having 1 MW of power plant which generates
four giga watt hours of energy an year.
As a joint venture with Lanka Ventures, the company is also running
2.2 MW plant that generates 9.5 giga watts hours of energy a year in
Neluwa.
The company has also built another hydro-power plant, with
Talawakelle Tea Estates, a sister company of the Hayleys Group.
In Radella, a Hayley’s plant of hydro-power of 200 kilowatt of energy
is supplying to the tea estate as well as to the national grid.
While Hayleys is completing a 1.1 MW plant at Somerset Estate,
another one with a capacity of 800 KW is being built at Palmerston
Estate. Both are expected to be operating by July.
Hayleys has also built a plant that generates electricity from the
waste heat of the activated carbon factories.
In the year ending March 2008 the energy section of the company has
had a return of 53 per cent of Rs. 709 million of capital employed. |