The inauguration of the commissioning of the pilot project on Microgrid in the Moratuwa University, last week at Kingsbury Hotel, Colombo could be the turning point of ensuring uninterrupted electricity power supply to the entire country with a grant of US$1.8 million by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). This pioneering pilot project is launched by [...]

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Ensuring uninterrupted power through Microgrids

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The inauguration of the commissioning of the pilot project on Microgrid in the Moratuwa University, last week at Kingsbury Hotel, Colombo could be the turning point of ensuring uninterrupted electricity power supply to the entire country with a grant of US$1.8 million by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

This pioneering pilot project is launched by Lanka Electricity Company (LECO) together with the University of Moratuwa and Diesel Motor Engineering (DIMO) along with German Specialists – DHYBRID consisting of power generation and storage, which can be scaled up for uninterrupted power distribution for customers across the country.

Dr. Chen Chen, Country Director Sri Lanka, ADB indicated that Microgrid is a solution to mitigate and stall the power interruptions and said that it can increase the hosting capacity of the distribution network and can feed the power to the network when the grid is not available, since the excess power can be stored while storage issues like reverse power flow and subsequent voltage issues can be addressed.

He said that LECO would seek the possibility of replicating the concept for other transformers to improve power supply reliability and the project can be shared internally.

He revealed that ADB has been a long-term partner in Sri Lanka’s Energy Financing sector development. “Our assistance is in clean energy, which includes Sri Lanka’s first large scale 100 MW hydropower station in Moragolla and the solar rooftop credit line,” he said.

ADB has been supporting the strengthening of power evaluation from distributed renewable energy generation both at transmission and primary distribution level, he indicated.

DIMO in this country is well-known for its involvement in automobiles – Mercedes Benz and Tata, Ranjith Pandithage, Chairman/MD, DIMO noted. He said the company came into existence before the World War II when his father was working with a German and he was the first to bring diesel vehicles to this country.

He said in the early ‘50s they put up the first diesel power generator and all the cement factories power generators were erected by DIMO. They are very strong in the medical sector and in all the big buildings there is something from DIMO, he said. Ceylon Electricity Board has been their greatest customers and even now, he said that they are doing lot of work erecting sub-stations.

Ms. Wasantha Perera, Secretary, Ministry of Power and Energy explained how the Microgrid could prevent major power interruptions – one that was experienced by the country recently.

Prof. Kapila Perera, Secretary, Ministry of Education indicated that Sri Lanka would be benefitting from the Microgrid which finds out ways and means as to how electricity comes from the solar, wind power and bio-mass energy.

He said that the laboratory for Microgrid would provide opportunities for innovations and inventions in this area and indicated that without innovations the country will not be able to obtain sustainable development and providing opportunities for people to innovate is one of the major things that would  be provided through this initiative.

Dallas Alahapperuma, Minister of Power and Energy and Prof G L Peiris, Minister of Education graced the occasion and also addressed the gathering.

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