High scope for wind power industry

Indunil Hewage

The private sector is optimistic of the wind power industry in Sri Lanka owing to its active participation and investments in the industry.

The potential for growth in the industry is enormous with expectation of at least 300 megawatts of wind power being added to the national system within the next three years.

Seguwantivu Wind Power and Vidatamunai Wind Power Chief Executive Officer Manjula Perera said more investments are on to build wind power plants in the country.

Five new wind power plants are to be built with an estimated cost of over US $ 60 million.

D L R Energy and Senok Wind Power plan to built two new wind power plants of 10 megawatts each. The 4.8 megawatts wind power plant by Naladhanavi (Pvt) Ltd, three megawatts wind power plant by Ace Power and 1.1 megawatts wind power plant by Vidullanka are scheduled to be built in the coming months.

In addition to that, three wind power plants of 10 megawatts each developed by Senok Wind Power, Seguwantivu Wind Power and Vidatamunai Wind Power are in successful operation since June 2010.

These plants are located in the Puttalam District. These plants have already added over 40 gigawatts of energy to the national grid during the last six months. Three more wind power plants of 10 megawatts each in the Kalpitiya region is now under construction. These power plants are being built by Pavandhanavi, Powergen Lanka and Nirmalapura Wind Power.

All these plants are to be connected to the national grid of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) by mid 2011. “Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka has announced the Non-Conventional Renewable Energy Tariff for 2010 and 2011 on November 25. The tariff has encouraged accommodation of more and more renewable energy power plants to the national grid. With the release of new tariff SPPA’s to be signed by CEB with few more companies for wind power projects totalling to around 30 megawatts,” Perera said.

Potential for wind power generation in Sri Lanka has been identified at various stages in the early nineties. This has been verified by the wind atlas released by National Renewable Energy laboratory of USA after detailed studies in Sri Lanka.