Sunday, February 7, 2016

Pre-feasibility study for SL-India HVDC grid linking project completed: PUCSL

 
Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL), the electricity regulator of Sri Lanka said the pre-feasibility study for Sri Lanka-India HVDC grid interconnection project is completed. However legal amendments are required on the areas of open access, electricity trading, partnership of cross border generation expansion, operation of cross boarder transmission licensees etc, the commission says. “Introduction of legal provisions are required on the areas of open access, electricity trading, partnership of cross border generation expansion, operation of cross boarder transmission licensees etc,” said Damitha Kumarasinghe, Director General of Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka, while addressing the 22nd Steering Committee Meeting of South Asia Forum for Infrastructure Regulation (SAFIR) held New Delhi, India recently.
He added that the project was originally planned for transmission of 500 MW which can be upgradeable to 1000MW.
“Agreements were signed to conduct feasibility in collaboration with power grid India and CEB. It was proposed to have this link from Madurai in India to Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka with a 50 kilometer undersea cable at 400 KV.” Kumarasinghe said.
“There is a big opportunity here because now India is connected to Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan but Sri Lanka is not connected to the South Asian grid,”
“Sri Lanka is the country which is outside this grid at the moment whereas the most of other countries are already connected. There are power deficits at various time intervals in both countries,”
“Large scale transmission network development is going on in India. Very attractive peak prices have been observed in Indian power exchange and also recently India and Sri Lanka have embarked on a very high growth on renewable energy and potential savings in spinning receive is a great advantage for both countries.”
Kumarasinghe added that Sri Lanka have large renewable energy potential especially wind and solar in the Northern part of the country which is very close proximity to India.
“So there should be a mechanism to harness and evacuate this power without any issue to the existing power system.” Kumarasinghe said.

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