April 03 (LBO) — Pelwatte Sugar has applied to the Ceylon Electricity Board to build a 25MegaWatt power plant fired by sugar cane waste, making it the largest dendro power plant proposed in Sri Lanka up to now. The company submitted the application after a recent cabinet decision raised the limit for buying power from dendro plants to 50 MW from the previous limit of 10 Megawatts, Pelwatte Sugar Director, Ariyaseela Wickramanayake said.
At the moment the CEB entertains applications for dendro power under a Standardized Power Purchase Agreement (SPPA) where dendro power is paid Rs6 per kiloWatt-hour (kWh).
The Sri Lanka Energy Conservation Fund then supplements it with a payment of between Rs2.50 to Rs3.20 per kWh depending on the time of the year, which is linked to the so-called avoided cost rate given to mini-hydro power plants.
ECF Chairman Ananda Gunasekera says Pelwatte could apply to get the subsidy from the Fund to top-up payments.
The ECF is hoping to subsidize 300MW of dendro power capacity for up to seven years.
CEB officials say the proposed Pelwatte plant is large enough to ask for a power purchase agreement similar to diesel plants, which has a capacity charge based on a c