Thursday, June 11, 2009
Star Online Report
An additional 940 megawatts power will be added to the national grid this year, Finance Minister AMA Muhith said in his budget speech at the parliament today.
“In 2009, 500 MW of additional power will be generated through four projects under public sector and 440 MW will be added from 11 projects under the private sector,” the minister said.
He said the bidding process for the construction of a 450 MW Bibiyana Power Plant was underway.
“If we go ahead as planned, we hope that by 2013, 2,810 MW of power will be produced through 13 projects under public sector and another 1,350 MW, under 3 projects of private sector including Bibiyana,” Muhith said.
He said the government was continuing dialogue with our neighbouring countries to import power for mitigating the power crisis on a short-term basis.
“We are now compelled to set up expensive dual-fuel power plants that can use diesel or furnace oil and also gas,” he added.
Currently our per capita power consumption is only 172 kwh, which is 325 kwh in Sri Lanka, 408 kwh in Pakistan and 665 kwh in India.
At present, our average power demand is about 5,000 MW, against which as of now the existing power plants can only generate 3800 MW of electricity.
