by Garvin Karunaratne

The SMOG kept us indoors for a few days and the never ending POWER CUTS have caused problems for the people as well as industrialists. Many a garment factory is closed. There has to be an end to this.

As an administrator in the SLAS my work included building massive stores- the largest one can find, small bridges and irrigation anicuts, small tanks and thus though not being an engineer I hold experience in making concrete structures. My knowledge though not on transcripts caused some qualified engineering staff to kiss goodbye to their jobs. Thus my words do carry some weight.

My administrative work in the hilly areas in Sri Lanka made me look at small hydro plants that turned the wheels of massive tea factories. I can vouch for the fact that small hydro plants can be made within months. There are many many sites I have found on my never ending irrigation inspections in the hilly sections of Kegalla, Kandy and Nuwara Eliya.

My own uncle’s factory was once working on electricity from a small stream flowing to the Mahaweli from Atabage and I have been though every inch of how water became electricity for the factory and bungalow. . Anyhow the electricity board people convinced him to abandon it and get electricity from them. He was gullible and against my advice embraced electricity from the national grid and a decade later when I met him was complaining that the electricity board jacked up their rates and he regretted that he had abandoned his water mill. Now my uncle is no more and a German investor has leased out that section of land and is building the watermill and eventually he will sell electricity and his profits earned in rupees will get out of Sri Lanka in hard earned dollars. .

The West sold us the neoliberal economics and sold us the idea of investors bringing their dollars and investing here. One definite case is this German investor. Investors do come to take away our resources and it is sad that we do not yet realize this fact. We are that gullible!

I am told that the environmental body in Sri Lanka has given a ruling that small hydro plants harm the environment. I can make a firm statement that that environmental body needs to have its head examined. Small hydro plants use the water that flow in streams and the water flows back to the streams. Perhaps the environmentalists have listened to some foreign advice- I have in later life been an International Advisor and am familiar with how advisors have screwed the economies of our countries by giving the wrong advice.

Let me enter into a different allied subject. Touring California in my son’s racing car an Z 300 Nissan, two decades ago,. I could not believe my eyes what I saw climbing the Altamont Pass. On a few hills there were a mass of wind turbines- there were 5041 turbines Those were the days when wind turbines produced around 1 to 2 MW. Now there are wind turbines turning out 4 to 5MW. I stopped my car and was gazing at the wind turbines for over ten minutes thinking how Sri Lanka can produce all its requirements of electricity because we have many hilly areas. The hills in the Altamont Pass are far smaller than the hills at Kadugannawa. Take the mountains at Ramboda, Madugoda, Hakgala, Ella, Ooduwara- places personally known to me, and if only we harness the energy we can easily produce all our requirements of electricity. I have made studies of this subject and my book: Wind Power for Sri Lanka’s Energy Requirements proves that we can easily harness the wind to provide all our electricity.

However we are made to believe that wind turbines should only be built on the coast. The coast has only a coastal breeze and I have lived by the coast at Matara and Hambantota and have also lived in the hilly Kandy and Nuwara Eliya Districts and can make a firm statement that we have real wind power in the hills than on the coast. However Sri Lanka has been building wind turbines only by the sea at Hambantota, Mannar and Kalpitiya. I have been to these places and can state firmly that these places have only the coastal breeze. One must note that the USA the leader in wind turbines has never built any wind turbines on its coast. Instead the turbines are sited at the Altamont Pass, San Gorgonia Pass and Techapi Pass, all in the mountains.

Someone is trying to prove that wind turbines do not work. Perhaps it is the Oil Lobby at work.

One has to only read a book by John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hitman to know how major organizations of the USA have sent in specialists to give the wrong advice. John Perkins was even told to fabricate statistics and to write projects where the loan funds would somehow end back in the hands of the donors, while the loan burdens the country – increases its foreign debt. John Perkins could not live with what he had done and came out with his book- Confessions. It was a real confession.

I can make a firm statement that we can easily live without power cuts and also save foreign exchange incurred to import oil-if only the Land Development Department that made all the colonization schemes in the Forties and Fifties is again set up to fix a few hundred wind turbines. We have to import only the turbine unit and the rest the wings, towers can all be built locally. On my visits to Spain I have seen many garages making these columns and wings and large lorries transporting them. Spain has done wonders in constructing wind turbines- some are even perched on angle iron pylons which I myself can easily build up. Spain today even sells electricity to France, all achieved in a few years through thousands of wind turbines.

If our leaders are interested we can set up a few hundred turbines not on the coast where there is no wind power but in our hills, which abound in wind power and we can kiss good bye to power cuts within one year. The cost of importing the turbine mechanism can be recouped within three months’ of what we spend to import oil.

This only requires a Land Development Department equipped with a massive labour force of a thousand welders and masons and the Graham Dissanayakes and Bada Pereras- the Land Development Officers of the late Fifties at Padaviya, who are sadly not with us today.

Once His Excellency Milinda Moragoda, our Ambassador in India, in his Manifesto: Moragoda for Mayor of Colombo” in 2011 stated that if he wins he will seek to implement the Youth Self Employment Programme of Bangladesh which incidentally was an amazingly successful scheme introduced to that country by a distinguished son of Sri Lanka, Dr Garvin Karunaratne, when he served Bangladesh as an international consultant.”(The Nation:11/9/2011)  That Programme has by now guided over three million to become entrepreneurs. 

I can make a firm statement that building a few hundred turbines within one year is a task far easier than my establishing the Self Employment Programme in  Bangladesh.

Garvin Karunaratne, former SLAS- GA Matara, 16/12/2022