The Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka has approved one-hour evening electricity interruptions for three days — Monday 19, Tuesday 20 and Wednesday 21 October — with the island split into four groups that are cut in turn between 4.30 p.m. and 9.00 p.m.
The approval closes a question left open since Friday’s islandwide blackout: whether the loss of the Lakvijaya coal plant at Norochcholai would force scheduled load shedding. It will.
Why the cuts
The schedules released by the Ceylon Electricity Board name the cause directly. Demand management is authorised, the documents state, in the event the CEB “is compelled to take demand management measures due to insufficient generation resulting from unavailability of Lakvijaya Power Station caused by a blackout.”
Hiru’s Gold FM desk, reporting the CEB announcement, described the cuts as rotational and following “a breakdown” that left the plant unavailable and cut generation. The two framings differ in a way this desk has tracked since Saturday: the regulator’s document traces Lakvijaya’s unavailability to the blackout, while the CEB account and last week’s expert commentary call it a breakdown. The National System Operator has maintained throughout that no plant failed and that Norochcholai was shut down to standard procedure. The plant accounts for 810 MW.
Earlier in the evening the NSO had asked the commission — and, Hiru reported from a special media briefing called by the Energy Ministry at the Government Information Department, the subject ministry as well — for permission to cut supply. The NSO attributed the step to recent instability and sudden failures in the power system, and to the need to hold the system in balance. The Daily Mirror carried the request at 5.14 p.m., citing the NSO chief executive.
The schedule
Each group loses supply for one hour. Disconnection and restoration both fall inside half-hour windows:
| Disconnected | Restored | 19 Oct | 20 Oct | 21 Oct |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.30–5.00 p.m. | 5.30–6.00 p.m. | Group 1 | Group 4 | Group 3 |
| 5.30–6.00 p.m. | 6.30–7.00 p.m. | Group 2 | Group 1 | Group 4 |
| 6.30–7.00 p.m. | 7.30–8.00 p.m. | Group 3 | Group 2 | Group 1 |
| 7.30–8.00 p.m. | 8.30–9.00 p.m. | Group 4 | Group 3 | Group 2 |
The rotation is deliberate. Every group’s cut moves one hour later each evening and wraps around from the last slot back to the first, so no group sits in the same slot twice across the three days.
That also explains an apparent discrepancy between filings. At the request stage both the Daily Mirror and Hiru reported a window ending at 8.30 p.m.; the approved documents and the later filings say 9.00 p.m. Both figures are in the schedule — the final group is restored “between 08:30 p.m & 09:00 p.m.” The earlier number was the start of that last restoration window, not the end.
Checking your group
Allocation is by grid substation and feeder number, not by town, and the published lists bear that out: Ratnapura, Matara, Panadura and Kiribathkumbura appear under both Group 1 and Group 4, and Anuradhapura, Dehiwala, Vavuniya and Trincomalee under both Group 2 and Group 3 — different feeders in each case. A town name alone will not identify a consumer’s group. The CEB directs consumers to the grid substation and feeder number that supplies them.
Two caveats are printed on each day’s schedule. The demand management capacity assigned to a group may change with actual demand, available generation and weather. And disconnection and restoration times may vary by up to 30 minutes either side of those shown.
Not reported
No filing says when any of the three Norochcholai units will return to service, or whether cuts will be needed beyond Wednesday. None gives the volume of capacity being shed, the cost of the oil and diesel generation being run in Lakvijaya’s place, or who bears it.
Ada Derana published on both the request and the approval, but the site has returned a CloudFront block to this desk for 30 consecutive days and neither filing could be retrieved or dated, so neither is cited here.
