{"id":53540,"date":"2016-04-04T12:58:54","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T19:58:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=53540"},"modified":"2016-04-04T13:46:45","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T20:46:45","slug":"a-solution-burning-in-the-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/04\/04\/a-solution-burning-in-the-sky\/","title":{"rendered":"A solution burning in the sky"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Editorial\u00a0Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) has reportedly unveiled an ambitious plan to double the buffer stock of electricity to ensure a reliable power supply. The feasibility of this project may be in doubt, but such action is urgently required if the economy is not to suffer a paralysing blow. The government is also said to have resorted to emergency power purchases to meet the current shortfall in power generation.<\/p>\n

The CEB is faced with a double whammy; the prevailing drought has not only greatly reduced its hydro power generation capacity but also led to an uptick in the electricity consumption due to unbearable heat. Power cuts are a worrisome proposition for any government given their political and economic costs.<\/p>\n

It is heartening that the government has stopped tilting at CEB grid substations and decided to grasp the nettle. The power crisis, which manifests itself from time to time, is not of recent origin though the incumbent dispensation has to carry the can, so to speak. Successive governments have neglected the power sector and sought to evolve solutions the way the hapless public gropes for candles during a power cut. The power crisis has become something like the chronic kidney disease; none of the many proposed remedies have worked all these years and the situation continues to worsen.<\/p>\n

Bernard Shaw has famously said all professions are conspiracies against the laity. This is true of the venal professionals in Sri Lanka\u2019s power sector. They are in the pay of various racketeers who profit from the CEB\u2019s inability to meet the increasing demand for power. They thrive on commissions from power projects and the supply of electricity at exorbitant prices to the CEB.<\/p>\n

Macro-level solutions, no doubt, need to be sought to the power crisis. But, the focus of the government needs to be on the micro-level solutions as well. Why there has been no serious attempt on the part of the state to incentivise more and more people to switch to solar power as well as emission free vehicles defies comprehension. Minister Ranjith Siyambalapitiya has announced a government plan to enable one million households to switch to solar power. This move should be commended, but proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating.<\/p>\n

What prevents the ordinary people from tapping solar energy is the prohibitive installation cost, which the government ought to step in to bring down drastically. Subsidies to promote the generation of solar power are a worthwhile investment; they will help the country cut down on thermal power generation and the oil imports, to a considerable extent.<\/p>\n

The late President J. R. Jayewardene, at his wits\u2019 end, unable to remove the scourge of terror and ensure public safety, once declared that the people had to look after their own security\u2014thamange arakshawa thamanma balaganna ona. Now, it looks as if the people had to meet their energy requirements themselves.<\/p>\n

There seems to be a sinister campaign against moves to reduce the country\u2019s dependence on fossil fuel based power generation in spite of what Minister Siyambalapitiya tells us. No less a person than Minister Daya Gamage recently lashed out at the CEB, during a TV debate, for an inordinate delay on its part in granting approval for a solar power project at one of his garment factories in Ampara. This is a damning indictment on the CEB and why the government has not ordered a probe into the minister\u2019s complaint is the question. There must be hundreds of entrepreneurs like Minister Gamage willing to switch to solar power and they must be enabled to launch their projects so that the CEB will also benefit from surplus power fed to the national grid. Is it that some CEB panjandrums and politicians in the pay of private power suppliers and diesel, coal, furnace oil and hydro lobbies are trying to discourage the solar power generation?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Editorial\u00a0Courtesy The Island The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) has reportedly unveiled an ambitious plan to double the buffer stock of electricity to ensure a reliable power supply. The feasibility of this project may be in doubt, but such action is urgently required if the economy is not to suffer a paralysing blow. The government […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}