The country-wide power outage on Saturday, December 10, will be on top of the agenda of the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) and the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) when they meet on December 20 to discuss power generation plans and related issues.
CEB spokesman and Deputy General Manager Eng. Noel Priyantha said that the PUCSL and CEB officials will prioritise the nationwide power failure to identify and eliminate all potential factors that could lead to such an outage in the future.
When queried about the CEB’s assessment about the blackout, Priyantha said that based on CEB records the power system had collapsed due to an under-frequency situation triggered by a lightning strike on the transmission line from Kotmale to Biyagama.
“The rapid and significant changes in voltage levels triggered the generators to trip out, initiating the power shutdown,” he said.
When we asked him if they had repaired the transmission line concerned, he said that no repair was needed.
“The transmission line from Kothmale to Biyagama is old. The line neither collapsed nor fell off; it only tripped as would a home trip switch or regular circuit breaker.”
“We had only to reset it, which we did in matter of a few minutes, then it energised without any problem,” he said.
On being asked about certain media reports which alluded that the CEB’s unfinished project concerning a transmission line in the Kotmale-Polpitiya stretch as being contributory to the blackout, Priyantha said, “This is something else. It was the Kothmale and Biyagama line that had tripped.”
