විදුලිබල ප්‍රශ්නයට මගේ විසඳුම

 HE the president of Srilanka

Dear Sir

FINDING A SOLUTION TO POWER CRISIS IN SRI LANKA

I have the honour to submit following proposal for your consideration.

Srilanka has a crisis situation in connection with generation of power. It appears from available data that the short fall of power is about 500 MWs during peak hours. And it also appears that this gap between the requirement and supply occurs mostly during the peak hours, from 1800 to 2200.

If the above shortfall can be generated with renewable energy hitherto untapped, this crisis can be overcome once and forever with following added advantages, among others.

1. Billions of foreign exchange can be saved by reducing importing of fuel from outside to generate that 500 MW of power.

2. Since this energy is renewable, environmental damage by using fossil fuel can be minimized.

3. Uncertainty of electricity supply, which is extremely damaging for the economy of the country, can be easily removed from economic planning of the country.  

For this purpose it is proposed to install a floating solar panel system on the water body of the Victoria reservoir. Victoria reservoir has 23 sq KM of surface on top of the reservoir.

A 500 MW solar power plant requires approximately 5 Sq KMs of surface area. So Victoria reservoir can easily host the proposed system.  But installing the system alone doesn’t provide a solution to present power shortage for our national grid because this solar system generates power only during daytime, and not during peak hours, when we need it most.

So we need to store this energy generated during day time at some place and utilize that at the peak hours. The technologies being developed for storing energy are twofold. That’s storing in a battery system and a pumped hydro.  Both these systems are developing fast and many countries are beginning to construct such systems.

 

Of these two methods, the pump hydro system seems better suited for our proposal because it is simpler and investment seems lesser. In fact the investment for pumped hydro is about half compared to a lithium-ion battery storage system.

A pumped hydro system works as depicted in the diagram.  In simple terms the water from reservoir used for generating power by rotating the turbines, are pumped back to the reservoir from the turbine level using the power generated by solar system during the day time in off peak hours. Hence the power generated by solar system is stored as potential energy in the reservoir, to be used to generate power during the peak hours through the turbines.

 

The efficiency of a pumped hydro system is in the range of 70-85% and this is only slightly lower compared to lithium ion battery storage system. It is interesting to note that USA uses disused mines also as storages for pumped hydro systems.

Following is a table that shows the countries that utilize pumped hydro systems extensively.

 

 

Country	Pumped storage generating capacity (GW)	Total installed generating capacity (GW)
China	32	1646
Japan	28.3	322.2
United States	22.6	1074.0
Spain	8.0	106.7
Italy	7.1	117.0

 

 Combined system like this is most suited for country like Srilanka because of the Monsoonal rain pattern it has. Because  when the water levels recedes to certain level because of the reduction in rainfall, the pump hydro component can be activated to slow down the regression of the water body until the next monsoon. Hence there is a pattern in the rain fall in Srilanka ; a country with a monsoonal rain fall, with certain degree of predictability we are at advantage over countries with less predictability in rain fall, for this kind of a project.

Internationally there are many investors who would be interested in a project of this magnitude and state of the art technology, and government can facilitate it as a BOOT project which will make it a FDI project helping our foreign currency situation too.

If there are any objections to this concept paper I am prepared to defend it at any forum and prove that this is workable and will be one of the best solutions available at the moment for the country, to overcome energy shortage. Further if I am entrusted with the implementation of the project I am prepared to raise funds and coordinate the project.

My contact details are as follows

l.illangakoon@gmail.com

0702526565

0812425453

Yours sincerely

 

Lakshman T B Illangakoon

Rear Admiral (Rtd)