Sri Lanka’s first Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) will be inaugurated in Anuradhapura on Friday morning, the Daily Mirror reported, in what the paper describes as a step toward strengthening renewable energy capacity and improving the stability of the national grid.
The opening will be held under the patronage of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, with Minister of Ports, Civil Aviation and Energy Anura Karunathilake taking part.
The same afternoon, the “Diya Janani” floating solar power plant — built on the Ibbankatuwa Reservoir in Dambulla under the government’s national renewable energy generation programme — will also be inaugurated, again with the President and Minister Karunathilake attending.
The build-up
The Anuradhapura commissioning is the first visible output of a programme that has been assembling for most of the year.
Battery units arrived through the Colombo Port in three consignments during May and June, including an 80MW second shipment in late May and a 2,241-tonne record cargo handled at CICT in June.
In August, officials said commercial-scale systems at 16 transmission substations were nearing completion and expected to join the grid in early September. Each adds 10 megawatts. The project WindForce PLC is building near the Anuradhapura substation was then about 85 percent complete — the furthest advanced of the set, which is consistent with Anuradhapura going first.
The systems are designed to absorb surplus solar generation during daylight and release it after dark, cutting the volume of electricity that must come from diesel-fired plants at night. Control rests with National System Operator Ltd. under the Ministry of Energy.
Procurement for a further 23 substations was already under way in August, and in July the government opened an international tender for 250MW/1000MWh of standalone storage across 25 grid substations on a build-own-operate basis.
Not reported
The Daily Mirror does not give the capacity of either plant, name the developer of the Anuradhapura BESS or the Diya Janani solar farm, or state the cost of either. It does not say whether the Anuradhapura unit is the WindForce project described in August, or whether the remaining 15 substation systems are also ready.
It gives no generation figure for the floating solar plant, no surface area on the Ibbankatuwa Reservoir, and no indication of whether Diya Janani is a standalone project or the first of a series.
No other verified newsroom had carried the announcement at the time of writing. The government news portal news.lk had nothing on either opening.
