ECONOMYNEXT – A Sri Lanka India joint venture solar power plant in Sampur, Trincomalee will sell power to the national grid at 5.97 US cents a unit, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said.
Initial negotiations for the plant were around 7.00 US cents (a kilo Watt hour) which was then lowered to 6.69 cents, he said.
“We concluded a few days ago at 5.97 US cents,” President Dissanayake told a public meeting in Katukurunda, Sunday.
The joint venture between state-run Ceylon Electricity Board and India’s National Thermal Power Corporation is expected to build a 135 MegaWatt solar plant in Sampur.
Sri Lanka was inviting investments because the CEB did not want to get into additional debt, he said.
But the purchase price was important, he said.
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The so-called levelized cost of a renewable plant (other than large hydro) does not show the true cost of such energy as it is intermittent and requires additional costs including grid augmentation, storage or stand by power, industry analysts say.
Sri Lanka has just started investing in strengthening the grid to accommodate more intermittent renewable energy.
The solar plant came after a coal 500 Mega Watt base load coal plant was scuttled by anti-coal activists. (Colombo/Jan20/2025)