By Chandre Dharmawardana Courtesy The Island

The title of this article, and some of the material are in what I wrote (The Island, May 6 th, 2013) when the then Rajapaksa government hiked the price of electricity on the May Day of 2013. A decade later, Wickremesinghe’s energy minister Wijesekera has increased the electricity tariffs, refusing to carry the burden of the energy bills of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), which has had no vision whatever (i.e., no research arm). The CEB is beholden to corrupt politicians, various types of energy mafia, ignorant prelates and activists who derailed the unimaginatively off-the shelf plans of the CEB for more lucrative plans customised to the desires of each administration.

The CEB plans were to continue with coal and fossil-fuel installations – assuming simple extrapolations of markets and needs! These would have failed to provide a continuous supply of power, with rising fuel prices and forex shortages even without the excuses” of the Ukrainian war and Covid chaos. Today’s reality is that Europe pays four times more for fuel, after the mysterious destruction of the Nord Stream fuel pipeline from Russia, while Sri Lanka can’t buy fuel without foreign loans or charity.

What is urgently needed is not punitive post mortems on past corruption (as the big fish gets off the hook anyway), but looking forward. The price hike on CEB electricity can be a good thing if it is channeled in the right direction. This might force the hotels and garment industries to set up solar panels on their buildings. The government must encourage them by providing suitable subsidies, whereas up to now the government subsidised the CEB. The government must move towards net metering” instead of net plus” (http://powermin.gov.lk/bfse/?services=solar-powersystems#:~:text=Unlike%20net%20metering%20method%20there,(Net%20Plus)) to encourage solar electricity. Vehicle-to-grid storage, hydro-reservoir storage (by saving head water during the day) so that solar energy from daylight is saved for night use are needed. Installation of floating solar on reservoirs will increase electricity output by some 30% even in the dark, purely by cutting evaporation of water. Reduction of unproductive lighting, e.g., at temples, churches, etc., where a few candles can be used together with minimal lights using solar power, batteries, or biogas generated from discarded food and offerings, must be encouraged.

However, providing household electricity and ensuring universal internet availability increase net productivity and should NOT be sacrificed.

Developing self-sufficiency in energy within Sri Lanka has become entirely feasible using solar, wind and biomass energy due to technological advances that have entered the market place vigorously during the last two decades. The rise in Sri Lanka’s population is expected to rise and plateau by about 2035. The increased energy demand needs an enhanced power grid, and even here the CEB has failed miserably. It has also failed to develop an information-technology (IA) branch to computerise the optimal switching, loading, unloading and routing of power on the grid. This is essential to deal with fluctuating power inputs and demands from distributed power sources (solar panels, wind turbines, banks of batteries, bioenergy) in various locations.

At a talk I gave at the presidential secretariat in July 2009, (and also to a number of learned societies in Sri Lanka) I pointed out that the cost of electricity was too low in terms of the mode of utilisation of power in Sri Lanka. So the 2013 power-tariff hike was justified and should have induced some switching to solar (see: https://dh web.org/place.names/posts/dev-tech.ppt/). The CEB should have set up pilot projects on solar, wind battery and bioenergy research.

However, unlike Sri Lanka’s agricultural sector which has world class research institutes to guide agriculture, the CEB has no research arm. The advice of the agricultural research scientists had been side-lined in favour of the magical methods of Ven. Ratana, Ven. Samanthabadra thera or the junk-science of vendors of organic food who drove Gotabaya’s government to agricultural ruin (https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2023/01/05/the_us_must_learn_from_sri_lankas_green_policy_mistakes_873852.html ). So one wonders if the energy sector would have fared any better even if it had a research arm. But at least the puerile battles between the CEB and the PUSL could have been tempered by a more objective voice based on science.

Electricity is one of the most efficient forms of energy (compared to heat energy whose efficiency is controlled by Carnot’s theorem, as discussed in simple language, e.g., in my book – A physicist’s view of Matter and Mind, World Scientific, 2013).

For instance, if a steam or diesel engine were used to convert the energy in the fuel to mechanical energy, most of it is inexorably wasted, as dictated by engineering versions of Carnot’s analysis, used in the Rankin or Diesel cycles. An impassable upper limit exists for converting heat energy to useful work. A petrol engine may only be 20% efficient at best. Realistically, even that is lowered by fuel burnt at traffic jams. But with electricity, the upper limit is 100%. So, going to electricity wherever possible is ideal, especially with electricity from sustainable resources, minimising green-house gas emissions and mitigating global warming.

How can the rise in electricity tariffs be a blessing in disguise? Will it not slow down Lanka’s industrial sector or the tourist sector? The blessing comes from new tariffs forcing people to set up their own solar energy sources to skip buying from the government. They cannot just buy fossil fuel to run private generators, now that fossil fuels are in limited supply. One can indeed argue that a grace period of adaptation, allowing businesses to set up their own solar sources may have been helpful. But good businesses would have anticipated this and thrive, while bad businesses with little foresight will fail.

The current electricity usage pattern of about 400-600 kWh per person per year will increase an order of magnitude within a decade, and future fossil-fuel bills would be horrendous. If Sri Lanka’s living standards were to reach that of UK (4000 kWh per person per year), Lankans need to boost their energy consumption by a factor of ten.

In fact, allowing for global warming in the next decade, a much larger supply of electricity will be needed, not only for air-conditioning of dwellings, but also for agriculture and all other activities. Farmers will have to adopt strategies like no-till agriculture” based on no ploughing, good use of herbicides, crop rotation and genetically-engineered perennials adapted to heat (e.g., PR23 rice) that need replanting only once in 5-7 years. But the humans who farm will need air-conditioned tractors as outdoors will become too hot for farm work. This may sound as mere climate alarmism, but the facts are already in.

Global warming of a mere one degree on the average will make hot areas hotter by much more (e.g., 5 degrees hotter); wet areas will become wetter, causing extremes of erratic weather. The wet-bulb” temperature (WBT) is that when the humidity is 100%. Human beings die at a WBT of 35 degrees C. Most of us die before that, with the co-emergence of both humidity and temperature too severe for human tolerance. This was the case in recent heat waves in Europe where WBTs of 28-30 degreees C were enough to kill (Raymond et al., Science Advances, 2020, vol. 6, p19) many. This means, Sri Lanka in the next decade will need not just an additional 77 TeraWatt-hours/per annum to get to European standards of living, it will also need another 30-50 TWh/per annum for securing its climate-adapted agricultural and industrial sectors.

Unless the Minister of Energy plans for the next decade right now (e.g., by establishing a well-endowed energy-research and development institute- ERI), his promise of no more power cuts” is pure Pinocchio pacha.

Why can’t the senior CEB engineers do the research and development? One engineer told me I am an engineer, and not a research academic; I drop my children at school, my wife at work, pick up the meat and groceries from the market, pick up children from school, drop everyone home, take them to tuition, birthday parties, alms-givings, and even stay in long line-ups for essentials. Do you really think any professional can do any research”? Only young graduate-students or interns” can do something, and that too for short times in between strikes, power-cuts and other disruptions!

Even the available technology is not used. Luxury hotels install marble, expensive Jacuzzis and high-end items in their construction but not solar panels. Given the costs of a sports stadium, hospital, school, railway station or an airport, covering their roofs with solar panels is a negligible cost increment that pays for itself. Setting up a biogas facility to exploit the waste generated at such sites is not thought of. Given today’s energy tariffs, and anticipating future tariffs, failing to install solar panels on institutional buildings of the private and government sector is stupid. Given frequent power cuts, some level of autonomous power is essential to all businesses.

Unlike diesel or coal-power installations, solar panels need no further fuel than sunlight. The installations require little maintenance and are non-polluting compared to traditional power generation,  as we know from the horror stories of pollution and increased illnesses caused by the Lakvijaya power station in Hororgolla (Horagolla being the traditional Sinhalese name of Norochchollai – see https://dh-web.org/place.names/).

So, let us have a round of applause to high electricity tariffs for grid-based electricity, if the minster links his increased tariffs to sustainable-energy incentives. Keep tariffs UP with one arm, till we reach shoulder high, but subsidize new installations of sustainable electricity with the other arm, so that both arms balance and do not go above the consumers’ shoulders.