May 28, Colombo: Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera says that an accelerated renewable energy generation plan is expected to be implemented from June 01.

The decision to take immediate action to implement the plan has been taken during a discussion held at the Ministry of Power and Energy this morning (28).

According to the Minister, the Fuel bill alone for power generation has exceeded USD $100 million per month. Average cost per unit generation has increased to Rs 48.

Accordingly, steps have been taken to implement two expeditious solutions under the Renewable Energy Generation Plan.

a) Preparation of roofs of industrial, government buildings, hospitals, hotels and other places where roof space is available for roof top solar panels

With the proposed electricity tariff rate changes, the current electricity bills of many of those institutions will triple. They can invest the current electricity bill amount on solar panels to be paid monthly to the solar companies to lessen the burden on their institutes and also on the national grid. The Ceylon Electricity (CEB) can manage the hydro and thermal power plants to be used during the night time to reduce generation cost and save the money during the day.

(b) Provisional approval will be given for the proposed projects expeditiously and a reasonable fee revision will be made due to the increase in investment costs.

Following the issuance of the purchase agreement, the project is expected to work with the Ceylon Electricity Board, the Sustainable Energy Authority and the investor to enhance the transmission line and capacity of the national grid with the required investment coming from the project investor. This will speed up the project timeline.

Apart from the 2 quick steps, large scale investments for selected renewable projects will be accommodated after technical and financial evaluation.