• Power cuts may increase to a maximum of 10 hours

 By Chaturanga Samarawickrama

Providing uninterrupted power supply will be a challenge by next week due to the unavailability of fuel and insufficient hydropower generation capacity, the Ceylon Electricity Board Engineers’ Union (CEBEU) said.

They claimed that the duration of power interruptions might be increased to a maximum of ten hours from next week.
He said the water capacity of the Samanalawewa and Castlereigh reservoirs would be sufficient for about seven or eight days. After that, 200 MW of electricity will be lost to the main grid.

Therefore, the number of load shedding hours would be increased to 10 hours.

Meanwhile, the Meteorology Department stated that inter-monsoon rain would be expected in the first week of April, but it could not predict whether rain water would be sufficient to fill the reservoirs.