Former Energy Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka has told the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka that the official accounting of losses caused by substandard coal imports contains a serious error: the hydropower burned to cover the shortfall was entered at zero cost.
Of the 197,673 megawatt-hours of generation lost, 35,209 MWh was made up from hydro and was assigned no value at all, he said. “This is a very serious error in the calculation,” the Daily Mirror reported him telling the regulator on Thursday. On his own calculation the opportunity cost of that water is about Rs. 2.2 billion.
The figures he put to the regulator
Ranawaka’s submission covers the first 19 coal shipments imported through Trident and five further shipments during 2025–2026. The costs he cited:
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Additional coal burned because of poor quality | Rs. 7.099 bn |
| Maintenance, including ash handling | Rs. 93 mn |
| Electricity bought to cover the generation shortfall | Rs. 8.572 bn |
Those three come to roughly Rs. 15.8 billion as reported. Ranawaka’s argument is that the Rs. 2.2 billion of foregone hydro belongs on top of them.
Why zero is the wrong price for water
The reasoning turns on the fact that water spent generating today cannot be spent generating later. Had the reservoirs not been drawn down to cover the coal units, he argued, that storage could have been held back and used to displace diesel or furnace oil — the most expensive generation on the system — at some later point. Costing it at zero treats the water as free because no fuel was bought for it.
He also rejected the claim that reservoirs were overflowing during the period, saying they had not reached maximum capacity. The Mahaweli and Kelani systems run as cascades, he said, so even when one reservoir fills, generation can continue through others downstream — meaning spill at one point does not establish that the water was surplus.
Why this lands now
The submission arrives on the same day the National System Operator told the regulator that no fourth-quarter tariff increase is needed, citing reservoir levels and rainfall — the opposite end of the same question Ranawaka is raising. The Daily FT had earlier reported that the Commission’s own assessment remained subject to further examination, particularly on projected major hydro generation against rainfall forecasts. Hydro availability is now contested in both the tariff decision and the coal accounting.
Coal quality has been a live controversy for weeks. Trade unions have called the blackout report unclear for not addressing coal quality, and the chair of the parliamentary oversight committee on infrastructure, S.M. Marikkar, put the cost of substandard coal at Rs. 18.3 billion when he tabled a document in Parliament on 20 October.
Not reported
No other verified newsroom reachable by this desk carried Ranawaka’s submission. The filing does not give the method or price assumption behind the Rs. 2.2 billion, say who prepared the calculation he is disputing, or record any response from the Commission, the Ceylon Electricity Board or the National System Operator. It is not stated whether the submission was made at Thursday’s public tariff consultation or separately. Ranawaka has advanced several different coal-loss figures during 2026 on different scopes and shipment counts; those earlier numbers are not comparable with these, and the relationship between this Rs. 15.8 billion and Marikkar’s Rs. 18.3 billion is not addressed by any source.