Sri Lanka must accelerate both renewable energy development and transmission expansion if it is to generate 70 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, Sri Lanka Sustainable Energy Authority Chairperson Professor T M W Bandara said on Monday, Hiru News reported.
Bandara was speaking at a consultation session on the Interim Report of the Long Term Power System Development Plan, held at the BMICH.
”Delayed adopting certain technologies”
The country has ample hydro, wind and solar resources, Bandara said, but previously delayed taking up certain technologies and must now move quickly to reach the 2030 target. Generated power should be integrated into the national grid while also driving other sectors — he named transport and cooking — as part of the transition.
Transmission and distribution expansion, he said, is a key component of the long-term electricity plans, not a secondary consideration. That echoes a constraint already visible in the storage programme: batteries are being installed across 16 substations precisely because the grid cannot yet absorb intermittent generation at scale.
Capacity is not generation
Hiru News reports, citing the Export Development Board, that Sri Lanka reached 63.2 percent renewable electricity capacity by 2024, and describes this as a foundation for the 70 percent target.
The two figures measure different things. Installed capacity is what the plants could produce; the 2030 target is a share of electricity actually generated. Because wind and solar run intermittently while thermal plants can run continuously, a system with 63.2 percent renewable capacity typically generates a considerably smaller share of its power from renewables. The gap to 70 percent of generation is therefore wider than the two numbers side by side suggest. No outlet has published the corresponding generation share.
Beyond 2030, the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka has set a longer-term vision of 100 percent renewable power by 2050 to guide interim planning.
The financing gap
Expanding access to off-grid solar alone requires an additional US$6.6 billion to US$11 billion, according to figures cited in the report.
That sits against the build-out the Prime Minister set out in Parliament in June, where the Renewable Energy Development Plan 2025–2030 was described as envisaging 1,264 MW of wind and 2,071 MW of solar — 3,335 MW combined.
Sourcing note
No other verified newsroom had filed on the BMICH consultation at the time of writing. Ada Derana was unreachable for this cycle.
