Daily Mirror blames Sri Lanka's grid collapse on habits in coal procurement

In an unsigned editorial on 22 October, the Colombo-based independent daily Daily Mirror examines the nationwide blackout of 17 October, which lasted more than 3 hours. The outage also halted water treatment and mobile communications. The government approved 1-hour scheduled power cuts in 4 zones for 19–21 October. It blamed a fault at the Upper Kotmale hydropower plant and a grid imbalance. The National System Control Centre said this was why 3 coal units at Norochcholai tripped.

According to the editorial, the grid lost 810 MW when the units went down; the output of Unit 1 fell from 187 MW to below 5 MW. That unit had been under maintenance for 61 days. The opposition linked the blackout to the quality of a new batch of imported coal used since 4 September; the cabinet spokesman denied this. MP Ravi Karunanayake put the cost of the outage at 56 billion rupees. The regulator, PUCSL, had estimated the daily cost of the 2022 power cuts at 1 billion rupees.

The paper accepts that the government handled the crisis reasonably, but writes that repeated outages erode public trust given the promises made. Its recommendations fall under 4 headings. It calls for an end to emergency, old-style coal purchases and a gradual exit from fossil fuels. It also urges completion of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) restructuring, and scheduling risky maintenance for days with ample sunshine and low demand.