More wind power plants

Four plants add 33 megawatts to national grid:

Indunil Hewage

High potential for wind power

Hayleys Group and WindForce (Pvt) Ltd are currently building a 10 megawatt wind power plant at Nirmalapura at Kalpitiya in the Puttalam district with a total investment of Rs 2.3 billion.

The new plant will be known as Nirmalapura Wind Power Ltd. WindForce is a company owned by Seguwantivu Wind Power and Vidatamunai Wind Power.

Seguwantivu Wind Power and Vidatamunai Wind Power Chief Executive Officer Manjula Perera said construction work of the plant is scheduled to be completed by April next year. The farm of wind turbine generators will have seven turbines when completed with each turbine producing 1.5 megawatts of power, generating electricity making use of the strong gust of winds from the Indian Ocean.

Currently a three megawatt windpower plant has been built by the Government in Hambantota. Three other wind power plants are being operated in the country. These are the ten megawatt Seguwantivu Wind Power, Ten megawatt Vidatamunai Wind Power and ten megawatt Senok Wind Power. Currently, 33 megawatts are being added to the national power grid by these four wind plants.

Two more plants, the ten megawatt Nirmalapura Wind Power and ten megawatt PowerGen Lanka plant are under construction.

Construction work of ten megawatt Lanka Transformers and 35 megawatt K L S Energy Lanka have not commenced yet.

So far, licences have been issued to generate over 90 megawatts of electricity using wind power by the Ceylon Electricity Board. There is potential to generate at least 500 megawatts within the next three years using wind power in the country.