The 21 million Sri Lankans were left without poweron Monday following an unspecified “technical problem” at a major thermal power plant on the South Asianisland. The outage affected the entire country around noon local time (06:30 GMT). After six hours, power was restored in parts of Sri Lanka, but the capital Colombo remained in the dark at nightfall.
It is the worst power outage in Sri Lanka since March 2016. The whole country was then without power for more than eight hours because of a major outage. A “technical problem” at the Kerawalapitiya power plant, located on the outskirts of the capital Colombo, caused the blackout, according to Electricity Minister Dullas Alahapperuma.
Generators for hospitals
“Steps are being taken to restore power,” he said in a statement, without giving a time frame. By turning off the traffic lights, the cut caused chaos in the already congested streets of Colombo. Local police were struggling to manually manage vehicle flows at many major intersections.
The country’s hospitals and critical infrastructure have generators that allow them to take over. Local power outages are common, but national blackouts are rare. Kerawalapitiya is an oil-fired power plant with a capacity of 300 megawatts, or about 12% of Sri Lanka’s electricity consumption.
