The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) has ordered owners of large rooftop solar installations to temporarily disconnect their systems for 10 days starting today (April 10), citing the risk of grid instability during the Avurudu holiday week.
The directive applies to solar systems exceeding 300 kW in capacity — typically commercial and industrial rooftops — and will run from April 10 to 20. The period coincides with the extended Sinhala-Tamil New Year holidays and a forecast of persistently sunny weather.
The CEB said the measure is necessary to maintain the stability and reliability of the national grid. Electricity demand falls sharply during Avurudu as factories, offices and schools close, while midday solar output peaks under clear skies. The combination creates an imbalance the grid cannot easily absorb without risking frequency excursions.
“Managing fluctuations, particularly during periods of excess generation, remains a technical challenge,” the utility said, acknowledging that solar plays an increasingly important role in the country’s energy mix.
The order underscores a growing operational dilemma for Sri Lanka’s power system. Over the past two years, rooftop solar capacity has expanded rapidly under the CEB’s net-metering and net-accounting schemes, but the grid’s thermal and hydro baseload plants have limited flexibility to ramp down when solar generation surges. Without either storage or dispatchable backup, oversupply at midday can destabilise the system as easily as a shortfall.
The CEB thanked solar system owners for their cooperation and framed the shutdown as a short-term measure to ensure uninterrupted supply during the holidays. The announcement comes as the utility’s parent entity, the National System Operator, is separately seeking a 53% tariff hike from the public utilities regulator to offset losses linked to the Lakvijaya coal crisis.
