The government cannot say when — or by how much — electricity bills will fall, Energy Minister Anura Karunathilaka has said, despite an expansion of solar, renewable generation and battery storage intended to bring generation costs down.

Asked at a media briefing on Saturday when households and businesses could expect lower bills as renewable projects come online, Karunathilaka said reductions would follow generation costs rather than any published schedule.

“As we have explained, our plan is to bring in more solar power and renewable energy sources and reduce the cost of generation,” he said, according to the Daily FT.

Why there is no schedule

The Ceylon Electricity Board and related institutions set the cost assumptions underpinning tariffs annually, the minister said, so the effect of new renewable capacity is absorbed progressively rather than released as a one-off cut.

“As these things are gradually added and our costs come down, the assumptions made for each year will also decrease,” he said. “Therefore, we cannot say percentage-wise that it will decrease by this much after this period.”

Any benefit, he said, would reach consumers through the ordinary tariff-setting process as lower generation costs feed into successive calculations.

The capacity numbers

Karunathilaka put installed solar capacity at more than 3,070 MW, Hiru News reported.

Both outlets report that the National System Operator plans to add a further 1,392 MW of solar alongside 1,240 MW / 4,660 MWh of battery storage between 2027 and 2029.

That timeframe matters. When we reported the same briefing on Saturday, the Daily Mirror had presented the 1,392 MW as a 2027 figure, made up of 500 MW of rooftop and 642 MW of ground-mounted solar — components summing to 1,142 MW, leaving a 250 MW gap we flagged as unexplained. Hiru News and the Daily FT both now date the 1,392 MW to the 2027–2029 period, which would account for the discrepancy: the smaller components appear to describe a single year within a three-year total, not the total itself. No outlet states this explicitly, so it remains an inference rather than a correction issued by the ministry.

Context

The remarks came at the same briefing where the minister dismissed claims that the government is curtailing rooftop solar. Separately, new rooftop systems have been restricted to the Net Plus scheme, a change engineers say lengthens payback periods for households.

Sri Lanka’s last significant tariff movement was downward, and consumer groups have pressed for further cuts on the argument that cheaper renewable generation should already be reflected in bills.

Not reported

Neither outlet gives a current average generation cost, the date of the next scheduled tariff review, or the Public Utilities Commission’s position on the minister’s reasoning. No figure was given for how much of the 3,070 MW is rooftop rather than utility-scale.