CEB to witness turnaround

Dinesh DE ALWIS

The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) will be able to reach the break-even point and make CEB a profitable venture with the new financial plan from 2015, Power and Energy Minister Champika Ranawaka told the Daily News.

“We are preparing a new long-term power generation plan for the next five years. Our first priority is to transform our high cost thermal power plants into low cost thermal plants. By introducing coal, we are planing to end the high cost thermal power plants during this five year period. Within that period we can reduce the cost significantly,” he said. CEB’s power generation cost has been high compared to the average electricity selling price.

This was mainly due to the heavy dependency on oil based plants for power generation, especially during the past 10 years, Ranawaka said.

“Our generation and the total cost would be Rs 17.51 per unit for this year. But we are selling a unit at Rs 12.94. That is a serious problem. But this Rs 12 is high compared to other countries. For example in South Korea it is Rs Seven,” the Minister said.

However, with the commissioning of the 300 MW Coal Power Plant by 2010 end, followed by the commissioning of the 150 MW Upper Kotmale Hydro Power Plant in 2011, it is expected that some expensive oil power plants which incur a high generation cost will be stopped and as a result, the average generation cost will come down.

Electricity prices will be further stabilized with the commissioning of Stage II of the Norochcholai Coal Power Plant and the benefits of the reduction in generation cost will be passed on to the consumers in the long run.

”Seventy-five percent of our revenue is spent on private power producers. Their bill is Rs 90 billion per annum. We are now trying to reduce that cost.

We also are planning to negotiate with them. If they do not agree we will retire them in the future.

Parallel to these developments, electricity tariff will be rationalized to reflect the generation costs.

The Government’s policy on tariff rationalization will be a concessionary rate for low income electricity consumers and tariffs will be adjusted to encourage the energy conservation measures for high energy consuming categories.

As per the Sri Lanka Electricity Act, No. 20 of 2009, future electricity tariff setting will be carried out by the Public Utilities Commission in consultation with all the stakeholders.”

Minister Ranawaka said. “We are targeting to utilize our properties to make CEB a profitable place.

We have lands,buildings and bungalows. We have also placed a fibre network all over the country. we are going to hire that fiber network to mobile service providers and broad band service providers.

We will utilize our assets properly so that we can earn an additional income. We have Rs 600 billion assets base , one of the biggest assets base in State institutions.”

”We depend on fossil fuel. This is a temporary measure. In the near future we will enter into the renewable energy sources.

the Sampoor Coal plant, we will not instal any coal power plant here.

We are promoting solar, wind, tidal wave and geo-thermal as renewable energy sources soon,” the Minister said.