Source:economynext.com
Sri Lanka's cabinet has approved the signing of power purchase agreement with a company called United Solar group, Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera said in a social media message.
"Cabinet approval was granted yesterday to enter in to a power purchase agreement with United Solar Group of Australia to invest in a 700Mw solar power project, Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera said in twitter.com message.
"The Solar power project will be installed on the surface of the Poonakary Tank in the Kilinochchi District, with a foreign direct investment of 1,727 million US dollars," he said.
The project will have a 1,500 Mega Watt hour battery energy storage system. The tariff at which PPA is to be signed was not disclosed. However battery storage requires more investments and stable power can be provided for the grid, avoiding instability and grid failures, or stored and provided during the night peak.
A key problem of solar and wind power – without batteries – is that they variable and cannot be substituted or directly compared with the power provided by coal, fuel or large hydro systems with storage.
The Cabinet, in September, approved the project proposal presented by United Solar Energy Sri Lanka in principle, subject to evaluation of the proposal.
United Solar Energy Sri Lanka is the local arm of the Australian firm.
"The project also save around 750,000 tons of CO2 emission per year which is about 4 percent of total annual emissions a year in Sri Lanka."
Sujeewa Nishantha CEO/Director of United Solar Energy Sri Lanka outlined the project components as follows:
– Design, supply installation, and commissioning of 700 mw solar power plant on 288,000 precast concrete piles in the shallow areas of the Poonakary Tank about 3m above the tank bed level
– Design, supply, installation, and commissioning for advanced battery storage system that can absorb during the peak and store during off peak.
– Design and rehabilitation of Poonakary Tank 10km long earth filed tank bund increasing the storage capacity of 18.5mcm in accordance with the Irrigation Department technical specifications
– Design and construction of 3 sluice gates to prevent and control sea water intrusion.
– Design and construction of 12km irrigation canal network to feed the irrigation water to over 100 acres of agricultural lands.
Nishantha said there was possibility of providing power to India as grid interconnection between the two countries are planned.
"We have 350 million population in nearby south states of India," he said. "The future economic corridors are mainly entailing clean energy transmission and digital corridors. As we are so close to India and must share the resources."
