Sri Lanka’s cabinet has decided to purchase 60 megawatts of power through an open international competitive bidding process for a short term period of six months starting from February. This 60MW is to be installed at three or more suitable locations to ease the transmission constraints that has arisen in the Central and Southern Provinces due to low rain fall.

According to the recommendations made by Public Utilities Commission, more generation capacity should be added to the national grid to ensure uninterrupted power supply. The cabinet approval has also been received to extend the expired agreement periods of Ace Power Plant Embilipitiya (100MW), Ace Power Plant Matara (20MW) and Heladhanavi Power Plant Puttalam (100MW).

The CEB requested to extend the power purchase agreements of these power plants by five years, but the ministry believes that it is not appropriate to extend the period by 5 years since government is looking to purchasing these three power plants for the future energy demands.