by Ifham Nizam

Yesterday’s countrywide power outage, which lasted over four hours was triggered by an unexpected failure in the 33 kV bus bar at the Panadura grid substation, according to the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB). The disruption, combined with reduced power demand on Sunday and increased solar energy production, had led to a system instability, CEB engineers said.

The CEB said its system control division had previously managed to avert such nationwide failures on multiple Sundays under similar conditions. However, yesterday’s grid instability proved too severe to prevent a full collapse.

A senior CEB engineer told The Island that the country was at risk of facing a similar situation on Independence Day but was fortunate to avoid it.

“The system cannot handle the massive load from solar energy. It was 1,500 MW, whereas it is usually between 1,200 and 1,300 MW,” he said, noting that industrial power consumption was very low on Sunday.

“Battery backup is also very limited. We at the CEB are managing as best we can,

but the majority of private companies have not implemented backup systems. Overall, backup capacity is less than 10 percent—so imagine the situation,” he added.

A senior electrical engineer from the CEB elaborated on the cause of the disruption:

“The power failure was caused by an imbalance in the national grid, which affected multiple regions simultaneously. Such imbalances can be triggered by various factors, including sudden fluctuations in demand, faults in grid infrastructure, or failures in key transmission components.”