CEB, Corruption and Renewable Energy
The politicians & their policies are responsible for most of the hardships we face today. But when it comes to the power crisis, surprisingly the politicians had good policies but failed to implement them due to bureaucracy and unbelievable level of corruption at CEB.
The politicians & their policies are responsible for most of the hardships we face today. But when it comes to the power crisis, surprisingly the politicians had good policies but failed to implement them due to bureaucracy and unbelievable level of corruption at CEB.
The ongoing power cuts are not a result of a capacity shortage, In fact, right now we have idling thermal power capacity because of dollar unavailability. The problem is having too much capacity in the wrong types of powerplants and too little in the right types.
It's an open secret that the CEB is not fond of renewable energy. They like coal, and love diesel but hate NCPE. (Non-Convertable Renewable Energy - solar, mini-hydro, biomass, wind). Major Hydro is out of the equation because there are no more viable steams to build them.
Despite being clean and cheap, solar and wind bring their own problems to the grid, The top issue is their unreliability. Large fluctuations make it harder to balance the grid and may require 6x -10x expensive thermal oil plants to maintain the balance. Ultimately this means caretaking renewable energy could become more expensive than generating electricity from Coal or LNG (Liquefied natural gas).
But, Sri Lanka are not there yet. Sri Lanka still has plenty of room for Solar and Wind. We only have around 7% of RE in the grid (excluding major hydro). We are far from the critical limit that could possibly considerably impact the grid from the fluctuating nature of renewable sources.
CEB wants to convince people that the unreliable nature of RE is the reason why they oppose it. But The real reason is, They can't maintain their infamous tri-mafias mini-hydro, coal & diesel when there is an abundance of REpower in the system.
Mini hydro has become a family business for CEB Engineers. The proposal of others won’t get accepted even though the offered rate was lower. The tender process of Coal purchases is demonstrably corrupt. But the diesel mafia is the biggest one of them all.
The commissions that they get from the emergency power purchase business must be unbelievably high when you consider the profit Independent Power Plants make due to CEB allowing Emergency power purchases (EPP) at 2x-3x times the average tariff.
The best example is the ACE Embilipitiya. In COPE it was revealed that Aiken Spence, the company that owns the Ace Embilipitiya plant (1 of 3 Individual Power Plants in SL at the time) has posted a profit of Rs. ~1.1 BILLION in 2016/17 through the sale of electricity to CEB.
EPPs are going on for ages, In the early 2000's CEB allegedly drained the reservoirs by systematically releasing more water than it needs to for agriculture in coordination with the Water Management Sec. (consist of CEB, Water B, Irrigation & Mahaweli.)
In 2018 CEB handed over a 3-year contract to ACE power without cabinet approval. They even didn't follow the tender process. When the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) was taking steps to put a stop to these corrupt activities the Engineers Union of the CEB demanded that officials of the commission be changed.
The tender process associated with IPP is just a formality anyway. There are only 5 IPPs in SL, Allegedly the owners of these power plants discuss among themselves and come up with a sky-high price per unit and CEB accepts it. In 2018 CEB purchases a unit of electricity at Rs. 28 and sold it for 16.