Techinical glitch and power plant breakdown, separate incidents - report

COLOMBO (News1st): The technical fault at the Kerewalapitiya Sub Station and the breakdown at the Norochcholai Power Plant are two separate incidents, a report has shown. The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) had attributed the recent islandwide power outage to the fault at the sub-station that it said led to the breakdown of the plant. The CEB Technological Engineers and Superintendent Union submitted a report on the incident to the committee investigating the matter, upon its request. Maintenance at the substation is carried purely on the technical know-how and experience of the superintendents and other officers and not according to any approved procedure, the report showed. It added that while engineers are given both local and overseas training, superintendents and other officials are not given similar training opportunities. The report questions why five security systems between the Kerawalapitiya sub-station and the Norochcholai power plant had failed to operate. Meanwhile, the CEB union highlighted the need to investigate whether the recommendations made by committees that probed previous countrywide blackouts. It drew attention on the delays in setting up the generators that were purchased to power the equipment that cools down generators at the Norochcholai power plant. The CEB union pointed out that although a state-of-the-art operations centre for the national grid was set up, the staff stationed at the centre lack proper experience. It added that experienced officers were removed from the operations centre and reassigned to other office work.