By Asoka Seneviratne –

Asoka Seneviratne

As a country located 9- degree north of the equator, Sri Lanka is blessed with abundance of sun. Sun shines over Sri Lanka with vengeance to the point of feeling burning hot for most of the year. Yes, sun is everywhere. According to Asian Development Bank, a square meter of PV solar panel with 5.7 hours of sun can provide 4.6 KWh of power. That works out to be 807 watt-hours of solar power with a PV panel of 3 ft X 3 ft size every hour.

Another report by the ADB put the potential available capacity of solar power of SL at 16 GW or 16000 MW. This is huge and free power all year. Currently Sri Lanka houses about 750 MW of solar power or a pathetic 4.6% of available solar power.

Sri Lanka currently produces a total of about 5100 MW of power which 58% comes from renewable sources and the rest comes from fossil fuels. In other words, SL produce 2142 MW of power from crude and coal.

Per IRS, one barrel of crude oil produces about 1.7 MWh of power. At $80 per barrell of crude, the cost of producing 1.7 MWh of power runs $80. As we produce 2142 MW of power from crude at peak, cost of our fossil fuel power per one hour is $ 100800.00, assuming we generate at the rate of 2142 MW rate.

Assuming we need to generate fossil fuel power at this rate all year, the cost to the nation per year for crude runs about $ 870912000.00  or 870.9  million US$.

Now if we import crude at $100 per barrel (US$ 20 more per barrell)  the cost to the nation per hour  will be $ 126000.00. Annualized, cost to the nation will be $1,088,640,000.00 or 1.088 billion US$. Per year

Now, given the corrupt, non-transparent nature of our politics plus awarding no-bid contracts, they can potentially pocket $ 217,728,000.00 or 218 million US$ per year merely from CEB oil imports. This is assuming we only use crude not a mixture of crude and coal. Nevertheless, the number is similar and the cost to the nation is mammoth.

The actual cost of CEB crude imports are higher per CBOSL (but close enough) running to over a billion dollars.

Now going back to Solar, it is widely assumed that the installed cost of a 40KW PV solar panel is Rs. 7 million. Given the 2142 MW rate CEB produce at peak, this works out roughly at Rs 374850 million or Rs. 374.85 billion to install solar to match that capacity. Or $1.25 billion to install PO Solar on a large scale. This cost is very close to the cost of importing crude by CEB per year. The actual cost might be a little  higher, but these are ballpark numbers.

It is widely believed that the average life span of a PV solar panel is 22-25 years, one can imagine the gigantic amount of precious dollars our nation can save! Imagine how many things we can do with all these saved billions year after year!

Better facilities for schools, better roads to our villages, better reserves, better budget deficit, better contribution to the environment, and most importantly using that God given sun that we consider far too hot to real better use.

Now lets take a step further. If each household is installed with a 5 KW PV panel at a cost Rs 1.2 million. Return on Investment is 4 years and 6 month. And the life span of a PV system is 22 – 25 years.

It is assumed monthly payback from the CEB is about Rs 25000.00, a substantial saving for an average family.

Now let’s look at another part of the world where the Sun is not an everyday blessing but leaders are; Europe.

The largest solar producers are Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, Estonia, Spain, Greece, and Malta in that order. Per capita use of Netherlands and Germany are 1044 watts and 816 watts and coming down to others, respectively. Given Germany’s population of 83.8 million, their current solar capacity is 68300 MW of solar power.

At solar use of 416 watts per capita with an 8.8 million population, Portugal produces 3660 MW of solar power currently.  None of these countries are even close to the level of sun we in Sri Lanka is blessed with.

But sunny Sri Lanka produces a mere 750 MW per statics of SL government. This is unacceptable given that previous governments have wasted borrowed billions on non-sustaining projects.

Our brainless leaders built with borrowed money airports with no planes, ports with no ships, conference halls with no meetings, roads with no vehicles, started airlines ( Mihin Air) with no demand, build roads with no parking spaces so vehicles park on the side walk and pedestrians walk on streets, level crossings with no warning lights so vehicles can clearly see them specially at night (turning them into death traps) and tall beautiful structures depicting national pride ( Nelum Kuluna at $108 million) and so on and so forth but never Solar Panels.

Gota appointed a minister for Batik, but no minister to drive Solar Power initiatives and incentives.

Starting from Colombo airport and driving around in Sri Lanka over to the dry zone with more burning son, one can hardly find a streetlamp with a solar panel on top. Whatever streetlamps we have are powered by the grid for the largest part. Gota installed some solar powered streetlamps near parliament but not sure how many of them are still working off solar.

Village after village in remote areas can do tens of thousands of small PV Solar panels, all free. All what is needed is smart leadership.

In my view there is simply no excuse for SL not to have solar powered streetlamps at minimum. That is why we elect hundreds of national, provincial and local leaders and take care of them. We leave these vital decisions to them but after being elected they are busy hounding for commissions, not public needs, of course there may well be exceptions, but the powers above may have a different agenda, so they too become helpless.

It all boils down to the caliber of leaders we elect. Are they smart with wisdom or just crooks bent on milking our wealth? Now we know after 76 long years.

This is why we need a change in Leadership badly. The same old will not work.

Finally, today I hear AKD will be revealing their manifesto or agenda soon. That is good news.

But I hope they are not going to spell out a list of promises but a properly laid out robust system change with afresh constitution with proper checks & balances, transparency and oversight. Such a system must be robust enough to sustain itself not depending on the caliber of leadership we elect. i.e Ranil postponing elections and more.

How to create transparency in spending, how to insulate the law enforcement and the judiciary from political interference, how the judges are appointed to insulate them from political interference, how the government services will be more like 21^st century and free from corruption, how the police top brass are appointed to function true to their oath to serve the public without fear or favor, what will the legislative agenda and priorities, how to recover the loot and hold those robbed our nation accountable, how to attract foreign and local investment, how to rid of crony capitalism, how to rid provincial and local bodies of corruption, how to repay national debt, how to restore education in schools and  minimize tuition class dependency, how to expand university and vocational school system, where the money will be coming from for these investments, how to prevent two government banks from  turning into personal money pots of the leaders, how to cut the massive budget deficits, how to expand the tax base without burdening the middle class while maintaining a positive business climate, how to expand our forex reserves, how to stop MP’s being auctioned, restore the dignity of the parliament and the executive branch and finally to create a government that serves the public honorably but not to themselves.

A good manifesto should address all these national issues in detail, giving priority to establishing a long-lasting robust system than depending on the personalities in power. Leaders can and go but the system must prevail even under a dictatorial leader. Such is a good constitution and hope AKD’s team is up to it.

A recent case in point in the global arena. For centuries the US constitution created a Democracy that was the envy of the world. In fact, if I am not mistaken, US constitution is the longest running written democratic constitution of the world. But on January 6^th of 2021, former President Trump instigated a violent uprising to ignore the election and remain in power.T he world was taken by surprise unable to fathom how this rock-solid American democracy lasting over 225 years was on the brink.

But the robust democratic institutions and the built-in safeguards of the constitution rushed into action and protected this much respected democracy from collapse. A good well-crafted constitution can sustain its Democracy against all evil.

AKD and his untested team have a lot of arduous work to do.  May they be blessed with wisdom for this mammoth task of nation building from scratch!