COLOMBO –The Ceylon Electricity Board has so far got enough water to generate 63 Gigawat hours (GWh) of electricity from the downpours from a depression that caused devastating flooding in the Central Province.
Sri Lanka’s hydro storage is now 928GWh, lower than the 1,000 GWh the utility would like to end the year with to cope with the drought that comes from February to April 2022.
“We are conserving hydro for the dry season,” CEB spokesman Andrew Nawamani said, describing the recently experience depression as a “sporadic pre-monsoon weather event” that has delayed the onset of the North East monsoon,
He said though there was still time for the monsoon to start, the depressions would have likely pushed it away.
“The water from the depression has already stopped. There was hardly any rain yesterday,” Nawamani said, noting that there 63GWh was two days of bonus electricity.
The CEB stopped one of its three coal plants last week amid stalled coal supplies.
The shutdown was timed to carry out some scheduled maintenance, Nawamani maintained..
A coal shipment was due on December 5, with a 60,000 metric tonne of cargo.
On average about 10,000MT of coal can be unloaded via barges from a ship, but it can vary from 12,000 to 15,000MT, Nawamani said.
There have been fears that the required coal for next year cannot be unloaded before the monsoons start around April/May 2023.
-economynext.com
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