Measures taken to boost Sri Lanka’s power sector through the smart grid concept will drive sectoral growth. The country will have a strong power sector in keeping with global technological developments, said State Minister of Power and Renewable Energy, Ajith P. Perera at the inauguration of the annual conference of the Organization of Professional Associations of Sri Lanka held last week in Colombo.
“The road map to the smart grid concept was approved by the Cabinet of Ministers last week and the process is expected to be completed within the next five years. Sri Lanka will need 60,000,000 smart meters. Services of the current meter readers will be redundant in future.
They will be trained to provide customer relations related services to keep them gainfully employed,” he said.
Once the implementation process is completed most of the burning issues in the power sector will be solved. There is a control room set up in Battaramiulla with an investment of Rs 3 billion to stimulate power supply.
“We are experimenting on a weather modification process in order to engage in rain management mechanisms and the equipment required for this purpose is already in place. With this, the unexpected rains could be made better use of and rain patterns will also be predicted in a more accurate manner. The agricultural sector of the country could benefit immensely with this move,” he said. Stressing the need for the country to generate power through renewable energy sources, the Minister said that this will also help in reducing present high electricity costs. Sri Lanka’s electricity generating cost is US $ 0.8 where as in China it is $ 0.4. With the introduction of renewable energy, costs could be reduced to $ 0.5, he said adding that the existing under-ground cable network has been modified to meet the power generation requirements of the country.