Ceylon Electricity Board Chairman Eng. Vijitha Herath said yesterday that it is now identified that out of the $ 200 million ADB loan for the Mannar wind farm, $ 47 million was left and therefore it has been decided to produce additional 20 MW of power by using six turbines.
We will be calling for Requests for Proposals soon for that, he told Daily News Finance yesterday.
Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa will declare open Sri Lanka’s largest wind power plant in Mannar, which is also the first CEB owned wind power plant at 10.30 amtoday.
He said that the project location is the best types for wind power in the Mannar District for the procurement of wind power.
He alsosaid that now that the project has been completed at a cost of US $ 150 Million , the wind power plant would add 100 MW of power to the national grid.
“The power plant is being constructed on an Asian Development Bank loan of US $ 200 million received by Sri Lanka. However, following the completion of 100 MW He said that the CEB would be calling for Requests For Proposals (RFPs) soon in this regard.
The contract was been awarded by the CEB to Vestas Asia Pacific AS, a world-renowned Danish wind turbine manufacturer, to build the first large-scale wind farm in Sri Lanka in the southern coast of Mannar Island.
The project comprises 30 state-of-the-art wind turbines, each rated to 3.45 MW. The total installed capacity of this wind farm is 103.5 MW Herath confirmed.
The Mannar Wind Power Project recently completed the final main gravity foundation along with the erection of the 10th wind turbine.
The primary contractor, Vestas Asia Pacific, along with their specialist civil engineering contractor, Access Engineering PLC, has achieved satisfactory progress amidst challenging conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic, he said.
He also explained that the plant life of the wind turbines is at least 20 years and that they would be testing them after the life times were over and test the possibility of continuity even after that.
Mannar wind farm will be operated as a semi dispatchable power plant supported with advance wind forecasting system to optimize and control the wind generated electricity to the national grid. This is in addition to the bird detection RADAR system to implement selective shut down of wind turbines to avoid bird collisions, if any.
