Owing to the more or less efforts rendered by the responsible authorities during the past few decades, Sri Lanka is now approaching 100% electrification of its population. Electricity has become an easily accessible commodity to the public. However, a question arises as to whether the consumer is satisfied with what they get. Lacks of reliability and quality of the power supply have been the major issues to dissatisfy the customers at present. Simply power system reliability means the availability of a continuous and adequate supply of power and power quality means the delivered parameters of the supply (i.e. voltage and frequency) are within acceptable limits.

Hence, Power Quality and Reliability was the topic for the annual panel discussion organized by Electrical Engineering Society (EESoc) of the University of Moratuwa. This was held on 17th December, 2015 at the Water’s Edge, Colombo with the participation of a panel of professional expertise. The event was also graced by the Minister of Power and Renewable Energy, Hon. Ranjith Siyambalapitiya as the Chief Guest, Dr. B.M.S. Batagoda, Secretary to the Ministry of Power and Renewable Energy and, distinguished personnel from the University of Moratuwa and the industry.

In order to provide an entrance for the panel discussion, the results obtained from a series of surveys conducted by the EESoc on the available and demanded power quality and reliability of the country were presented initially. The survey results clearly depicted that, the concern of most of the rural consumers is on reliability than on quality where as for the urban consumers it is vise-versa. The public has demanded maximum reliability during 5.00 am to 8.00 am and 6.00 pm to 10.00 pm. Around 20% of consumers have shown their willingness to pay for additional reliability and quality at the expense of 10% increase in tariff.

Following the presentation of survey results, the moderator for the panel, Senior Professor Ranjit Perera from the Department of Electrical Engineering University of Moratuwa summoned the panellists for the discussion. Eng. H.N. Gunasekara, General Manager of Lanka Electricity Company being the first to address the gathering, spoke on the economic perspective of reliability. He emphasized that the extent to which the supply should be reliable depends on two factors, that expected by the consumer and that expected by the national economy as an infra-structure and, those two parties are respectively responsible to pay for additional reliability. Even though, that needs to be configured based on consumer categories, Eng. Gunasekara explained that the network can be differentiated only by geography, hence the consumers should be categorized based on both aspects.

Expressing the views on the challenges in achieving power supply reliability, Dr. H.M. Wijekoon, Chief Engineer of Transmission Planning Division of Ceylon Electricity Board mentioned that CEB’s first priority at this point is on rural electrification and the second is the power system reliability. He vividly explained the other priorities on hand and, the regulatory and implementation challenges in achieving reliability. For overall power system reliability; generation reliability, transmission reliability and distribution reliability should be equivalently achieved and Dr. Wijekoon explained the criteria for evaluating the three stages of reliability. He also noted that quick decision making in the order of authority is necessary to improve the power system.

Following the views by the two utilities in the country, the arena was opened for the regulator’s views. Eng. Damitha Kumarasinghe, Director General of Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka confirmed that the regulator is almost ready to get through the regulatory challenges previously mentioned by Dr. Wijekoon. Vividly explaining ‘quality in electricity’ as a single term of both power quality and reliability, Eng. Damitha said that it is a combination of power quality, supply quality, which is actually the reliability and service quality, which means the service connection and its services. However, regulator’s role in achieving this is to setup relevant regulations, rules and standards and, monitor them. As he explained, PUCSL is already processing the regulations in this aspect. He also presented a drafted procedure to prepare a roadmap for the regulator to improve quality in electricity.

Providing a comparison between local and international perspectives of the topic, Dr. Dharshana Muthumini, Managing Director of Manitoba HVDC Research Centre of Canada explained that the international practice in maximizing power system quality and reliability is thorough long term and short term planning. Also, he revealed that assistance from neighbouring countries and areas for high voltage ac or dc interconnections have provided additional reliability to foreign countries.

Finally the premier energy consultant in the country, Dr. Tilak Siyambalapitiya, the Managing Director of Resource Management Associated Pvt. Ltd. took his opportunity to speak on the way forward with power system reliability and quality in the customer perspective. He began his speech saying that consumers hardly question on reliability and quality of the supply as they, being Sri Lankans believe that reliability and quality are already dished out from the utilities. Speaking on the methodology to achieve the topic on hand, Dr. Siyambalapitiya said the first step is measurement of available reliability and quality, so that it can be properly understood and hence can control it. Explaining the correct regulatory approach, he mentioned the use of ‘allowed revenue’ for transmission and distribution to invest for reliability improvement and in any case the set reliability targets are not achieved, a portion of that should be ‘clawed back’ and effectively re-distributed among the consumers as compensation. He emphasized the need of a comprehensive plan for reliability improvement of the network with time targets and a sound monitoring mechanism.

Once all the panellists have presented their ideas, the open discussion round raised a number of questions from the audience. Eng. Anura Wijayapala, Chairman of Ceylon Electricity Board sitting in the audience revealed CEB’s interest in getting to the track of reliability improvement whilst working on its other programs in operation. Dr. B.M.S. Batagoda, Secretary to the Ministry of Power and Renewable Energy also addressed the gathering, emphasising the interest of the ministry in this regard as their next priority in hand. He also mentioned the importance of service quality in terms of how much the electricity sector employees are committed to their duties.

With the limitation of available time, the annual EESoc panel discussion came to an end with a number of important recommendations for improvement of power system reliability and quality. However, this can be considered only as the initial effort in a long way ahead, with the objective of drawing the attention of the responsible authorities to the next step in the power sector. Now, it is their responsibility to start planning, interacting all the relevant parties to setup a sound propaganda to improve the power quality and reliability to satisfy the consumer.