LNP – Even a monkey can cause an islandwide blackout to Sri Lanka’s outdated grid

Sri Lanka was once again plunged into utter chaos yesterday morning when an islandwide power outage hit the districts at around 10.45 am, disrupting the lives of its citizens and causing millions of losses to businesses and industries that were operating even on a Sunday.

As the power went out last morning, the engineers from the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) plunged into action to determine what had gone wrong and within a short while, detected the area which had caused the disturbance – the Panadura Power Station.

Engineers rushed to the scene and worked for hours to restore the power and by late night yesterday, power had been fully restored in all districts of the island. As reasons for the outage was desperately searched for, sources from the Power and Energy Ministry said that the reason was a group of monkeys. According to the Ministry, a group of monkeys had jumped into the Panadura Power Station yesterday morning and ended up in a scuffle resulting in one monkey hitting the transmission line leading to an immediate imbalance in the power grid.

The transmission line tripped and within minutes, since the consumption from the solar plants was very high, the national grid shut down.

However, whilst visiting the power station last afternoon, residents in the area were doubtful if a monkey could have caused the blackout. In fact they said that they heard a loud explosion from the plant and saw smoke rising from the area soon after. Within minutes thereafter the power went out.

The security guard at the Panadura power station said that he too heard a loud explosion and saw a ball of fire. Thereafter engineers rushed to the scene. When journalists questioned him if a monkey could have been the cause of the blackout, he said that was not true. “Monkeys jump into the power station very often. But this does not seem to have been caused by a monkey,” he said.

Even by yesterday evening, sources from the CEB said they could not specify the exact reason for the transmission line in Panadura to trip. Sources however said that the monkey story, as mentioned by the Power and Energy Minister Kumara Jayakodi could be true as the entire national power grid was so outdated that even a monkey could cause an islandwide blackout.

Sources said that presently Sri Lanka has a large solar power usage but these plants are not connected to the main national grid. At least 1000 megawatts are being consumed by solar power usage.

While sources insist that renewable plants should also enter the main central system, the national grid itself should be updated with bigger turbines and hydropower plants.

Discussions are ongoing for a grid connectivity with India while separate discussions are also ongoing to set up a hydropower plant which can pump water through the lower reservoir to the upper reservoir.

“These may be the immediate solutions but past governments have failed to act or upgrade the systems. In fact the national power grid is in such a weakened state that frequent islandwide power outages may be expected if there is a disturbance even in one of our lines,” a senior source familiar with the system said.

If even a monkey may have caused the power outage, it is difficult to understand how political leaders have boasted of working towards digital economies when the country’s own national power grid needs an urgent upgrade.