CEB engineers rule out sabotage

15 March 2016 08:18 am

While apologizing for the inconvenience caused to the public as a result of the islandwide power failure on Sunday, the Ceylon Electricity Board Engineers Union yesterday said any doubts about a sabotage would be cleared with the detailed study which is being carried out by two independent committees appointed by the Prime Minister and the Minister.

“We will extend our fullest cooperation to any independent investigation on this,” the union said in a statement.

It also said although its members did all what is possible under trying circumstances to restore power, due to certain technical failures the restoration process was much difficult than during a normal day.
“We as a responsible union are more concerned about the occurrence of three total power failures within a span of six months and wish to assure the public that we would do all what is possible to implement a long lasting solution,” it said.

We reiterate that the failure started with the technical fault occurred in one of the 30 year old main transformer in Biyagama 220kV Grid Substation, which resulted simultaneous tripping of few important Transmission lines connected to the Biyagama Grid Substation.” Unfortunately this time also (similar to 25th Feb), the 3 Generators of Lakvijaya Coal Power plant could not iron-out the fluctuations of the power system started with tripping of few transmission lines, causing a country-wide outage.