Prof. Perera, an engineering graduate from University of Moratuwa obtained his Dipl.-Ing and PhD (Dr.-Ing.) from University of Technology Aachen, Germany (RWTH Aachen). After working on a post doctoral research assignment at RWTH Aachen for three years he returned to Sri Lanka to work as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Moratuwa. He was appointed Professor of Electrical Engineering in 2004 and headed the Academic Department of Electrical Engineering for four years from April 2004 to March 2008. He is an award winning researcher having over 25 national and international publications to his credit.
Prof. Ranjit Perera, is the Director General/ CEO of the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka. He has completed his first year in the regulatory Commission but has over 25 years of engineering /teaching experience in Electrical Engineering.
This is an interview with Director General of PUCSL
What are the main responsibilities of PUCSL?
PUCSL was established in 2002 to regulate very important utilities. There are three different areas have been identified; namely Water, Electricity and downstream Petroleum products. But according to the law, each of these industries has to be commissioned by a separate parliament act. That has happen only for electricity up to now. Although we are designated to regulate Water and Petroleum products, still we are not authorized to impose any rules. For electricity act that was passed in parliament recently has empowered us to regulate the electricity industry. With that, it is our duty to ensure continuous electricity supply throughout the country through a licensing process. That means, we should issue license to everybody who are acting in electricity generation, transmission and distribution. So there are around 150 licenses of that nature and some of them were issued by the ministry of Power and Energy earlier. There is a six month period of validity for that. At the end of these six months new license are to be obtained from the PUCSL. This period ends on 7th of October. We are receiving applications from various people. And we have published our intention to grant license in the newspapers. Every Wednesday we are putting advertisements. Up to now we have advertised for 72 different licenses. CEB is in six licenses, one for generation and one for transmission and four for distribution. And LECO is getting another license. There are number of mini hydro plants and other renewable forms that have applied for license. In that category, we have published our intention to grant license for 72 up to now. But there are more applications coming. That is one of the main activities and in the license; we set conditions for the operation and while monitoring continuously. If in case of violation we have the legal power to take action against the license or in worst case scenario it is possible to terminate the license. In addition, price regulation is another responsibility of PUCSL. That means the electricity price and utility price are to be finalized by us. Aafter analyzing the details obtained from the industry regarding costs and capital values, final unit cost is set.
The process is somewhat novel to Sri Lanka. As you know the electricity price is a very sensitive issue. Electricity has become a political commodity and elections can be won or lost on electricity prices. Since it is a sensitive issue and the government is not prepared to revise prices frequently. And it is even our policy to avoid frequent price revisions. Last revise was in November 2008. So we don’t expect any changes till next year. We have various standards prepared in consultation of CEB and LECO to improve the quality of electricity supply. This process is still ongoing and these standards are to be put into practice. Of course, always in case of violation we can take actions. But these standards are gradually to be improved. Sometimes the failure rates are very low. As an example in developed countries you get an electricity failure once or twice a year. Where Sri Lanka you can get once an hour.
So we can’t jump from this low level to a very higher level from a very short time. We have to improve gradually. And voltage fluctuations are very common in Sri Lanka. In rural areas we get low voltages. Due to operational failures and other things, you get high voltages. Those can cause household equipment failure. High voltages give immediate effects and low voltages give long term effects. The life time of equipment is reduced in either case. So these are the issues where we have to bring improvements gradually. You can’t improve these in a very short time. Because low voltage issue is a very wide spread problem. You have to invest a lot of money and you have to put more transformers and do phase balancing and shorten the distribution lines and so on.
Supply electricity for all is one of the targets in the government. So they want to reach that within next eight years. Also 17% our households are without electricity now. There are plans drawn by CEB to electrify these within next year. So we review those plans and we are setting priorities on which areas should be electrified first and so on.
So up to now PUSCL is entirely about electricity?
Yes. Because as I mentioned earlier the other two areas designated to us are not under full authority of PUCSL. And because you asked that I’d like to say few thongs on our involvement in petroleum sector. The petroleum sector is not allocated to us as a separate industry. But there is a cabinet decision which has requested us to get involved in lubricant area. Also in the lubricant sector it is called the shadow regulation that means we advise the ministry of petroleum products and they implement our recommendations. So we make recommendations, they give the license. These are the two areas we are directly involved.
There seems to be a very big time lag to credit the accounts of electricity bills which affects the economic situation adversely. How will the PUCSL use its influence to solve this problem?
That is actually real situation in rural areas I guess. We are receiving a large amount of complains related to electricity sector. Some of them are addressing the problem pointed by you. People say they have to travel long distance to pay their electricity bill and sometimes you pay the bill today but you will be credited after a month or so. Actually the electricity you use on credit, you use today you pay in a month. So the customer should build up as a practice to pay the bill in time without much delay. So CEB is giving 2 months of time to do that. So if customer pays at the end of the two months both parties are in trouble. So the customer should learn and practice it to pay on a particular day in a month and that should be properly decided depending on the circumstances. On other hand the CEB has 4.5 million customers. You need a big net work to collect that money. So CEB is also trying to improve their shortcomings.
If we are not satisfied with the service provided what are the steps we can take?
If you have a problem with CEB or LECO the first thing is you have to communicate with them. Just speak to your relevant customer service. If you think that there is something not satisfied happening or if they don’t attend to you properly, then you can write to us. Now every day we are receiving around 10 complaints and most of them, we can solve in very short time. And the others are very complicated and we get time for that. And we have different affairs divisions. Few people are working there and we have separate set of inspectors there. And these inspectors are sent to sites and they look at the problem independently. Of course one of the biggest advantage customers have is when he or she complains to CEB, CEB is the culprit as well as the judge in that case. But when you come to the PUCSL it is different. We are independent.
What has been done to increase the accessibility of PUCSL service to consumers?
That is a different situation. Actually many people don’t know what is PUCSL. There are so many reports on the news papers and so on. We are making presentations to academic bodies and professional bodies. As an example I had the keynote address in IESL annual general meeting in Kandy. Although still the message has not gone to the public sector, we are receiving considerable amount of complaints over telephone. So you can’t say the knowledge is very small. People are aware of that but still we have a lot to do. So we will go ahead with the publicity campaigns.
Can access help through email or web?
Of course, there is a web page that is www.PUCSL.gov.lk. This web page is regularly updated. Also there was a big problem earlier when it comes to the tariff, how to calculate our electricity bill. So there is a program where you can calculate your electricity bill by feeding the data. This is a very popular item on our page.
What is the current status of the program that you have launched recently to improve the safety of internal electric installations within the government owned schools?
Actually, it is our responsibility to ensure the electricity safety throughout our island. Although it is a very useful product, it is equally dangerous. Unfortunately in our country we hear one death every month in average. So that is a very bad situation. In developed countries, you don’t hear such situations. So it is our responsibility to reduce this one. One of the steps that we have taken is improving our safety regulations. In addition to that, we thought we should pay attention to government buildings. We have noted that in government buildings such accidents are more. We have picked to implement this program in government schools. And every month we are visiting around ten schools all over the country and make inspections to find out what shortcoming are there. Of course we don’t have funds to rectify, but we guide the school staff and principals, OBAs and OGAs.
Is it monitored afterwards?
Yes. With our limited staff we try to do that.
Is it restricted only to schools?
Yes. There are 10000 schools in our country. This week we inspected three schools in Wellawaya. When you do that, two days are needed. Actually one of the reasons for doing this in schools, you can pass the importance of safety for the whole society. When we give that message to the teachers and students, they will send that message to their parents and villagers and for further distances. The other thing is lives of our schoolchildren are more precious. And if you cultivate these things in the school children they will take that message throughout their life. And later of course when the school situation is straightened out, we intend to shift to hospitals.
Are there any programs that have been launched to lower the consumer’s utility bills?
That is one of the main responsibilities of us, to provide affordable electricity to the consumers. Electricity is not just buying and selling. Electricity involves long term investments. If you put a power station, the life time will be 20 years or 100 years. So once you build a power station you can’t shut it down. Unfortunately, we have not taken the correct decision at correct time. Concerning about the coal power stations, that has been delayed 20 years due to social and political issues and only now we are getting our first coal power station which will be commenced on next year. But still we have expensive diesel power stations and gas turbine power stations. We can’t shut down them immediately. So the cost of electricity will go down slowly. But on the other hand the coal and fuel prices are going up. So the price reduction can’t be expected. After the completion of the proposed coal power plants in Norochcholai and Sampure average cost will be relatively low. And during that time we can probably retire the expensive gas turbines and diesel plants. Within the next few years we may experience cost reductions. But as I mentioned earlier there can be cost escalations due to coal and oil prices. Another fact is the efficiency of the system. As we know electricity losses of our country is around 15%. This is a very good situation.
In other countries when they put a power station they are 3000MW or 4000MW plants. These are so called mega power stations. There is no place in our country for plants like that, because, our annual increase in power demand is about 150MW. So if you build a 1000MW plant we have to wait a long time. That makes electricity more expensive compared to mega power plants.
What do you point about the Atomic Energy Authority and Nuclear power for Sri Lanka? Is it possible?
There were three barriers for nuclear power in past. One is specific to Sri Lanka and others are generally for the world. The special problem to Sri Lanka is our low base load. For a nuclear power plant the most economical size is about 600MW. Sri Lanka being a small system, there is no place for a single unit like that. So our biggest unit of Norochcholai will be 300MW. And so it is not suitable to put a 600MW plant in Sri Lanka till next 10 years. But definitely after 2020, assuming our economy is expanding, such plants are suitable for Sri Lanka. But if you want to put a nuclear plant in 2020 you have to start now. Construction period is 15 even in developed countries. Second is security situation which has now improved. The 3rd is the aftermath of Chernobyl explosion. After the explosion of Chernobyl in 1985 most of the countries said that they are not going to construct nuclear plants again, including the leaders of nuclear energy (UK, Germany, USA) in modern world. Only few countries like Russia, Japan, France, Iran, South Africa and Pakistan never gave up the will to come up with nuclear based energy allowing them to have cheap electricity. In France, they are selling electricity to all the neighbor countries. In Japan, 40% of electricity is from nuclear. Nuclear is cheaper than coal. On top of that we don’t have coal. But we have thorium in the western cost of our county.
Chernobyl disaster has created a negative perception about demoniacal nuclear power over the years. Do you think we can overcome it?
Different countries use different mechanisms for meltdown process. None of them are perfect. So we have to overcome this. On top of that our people object anything new. We have been about discussing about coal power stations for many years. If we were to put a coal power station as planed earlier, the current situation would have been much better. But we delayed it for over 20 years. In engineering you have to take risks.
Does our country have fair enough education background about nuclear energy?
No. We don’t have. But we have intelligent engineers and even more intelligent engineering students. Definitely, though we don’t have a nuclear program in our university system, you can easily do MScs and PhDs in outside of the country. And also we can consult foreign expertise. Even for coal and big hydro projects we always depend on foreign experts. So that is not a barrier. But the barrier is many countries will help us to put a coal power station, but only a limited number of countries will help us to put a nuclear power station. That is also not a problem because Sri Lanka is a country who has no enemies. In our history after the independence we never had external enemies. Probably, Japan and India will help us. Only government has to take a policy decision and people should ready to accept it. As you mentioned, in our country, we have different type of democracy more than any other country, people can stop projects.
What are the other industries you consider as to be regulated by the PUCSL?
Actually, from the PUCSL act we are only designated to regulate three industries. But foreign donors are promoting other industries like port and toll roads to be regulated by somebody. And some people have even identified our organization for that. But there is long way to go. It is a very slow process. As I mentioned earlier, now we are empowered only for regulation of electricity by electricity act. But electricity act was discussed in our country for 12 years. Three separate acts were brought to the parliament; only succeeded in its third attempt, this march.
Wouldn’t you think the Telecommunication and Transportation should come to this shelter?
In our country there is a separate organization to regulate telecommunication. There are some political opinions that all these should come under one organization. But I think there’s no need for merge these two and same applies to the transportation.
Are there any financial assistance programs for the consumers launched by the PUCSL?
Actually, subsidies are decided by the government. We can of course advise the government to targeted subsidies. Other than advising we have no role in deciding them. But we will be implementing the decision taken by the government.
What are the Future plans of PUCSL?
We have started regulating electricity industry and within a year we want to bring some improvements to the industry. And we are hoping to give more emphasis on the project of raising awareness among school children. But we want to go to other designated two sectors as well.
Any message for the consumer sector?
Consumers have to understand that electricity is a very expensive commodity. We should pay for electricity. Pay the bills in time. Do not waste electricity .And we should not try to steal electricity. According to the last year counts there was a 50 million daily loss for CEB. So we can’t go ahead with this. People have to be aware of that, all parties; PUCSL, CEB and consumers should contribute to the current situation.
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