October 06, Colombo (LNW): The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) has officially called for tenders to develop 200MW/200MWh of battery energy storage systems (BESS), as part of its broader strategy to strengthen Sri Lanka’s national grid and increase its capacity to absorb renewable energy.
The initiative, backed by funding from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), represents a key step in the country’s energy transition.
The BESS project, to be located at the Kolonnawa grid substation, is being tendered in two equal parts—each for 100MW/100MWh of storage capacity. This large-scale deployment is intended to address one of the major technical challenges in integrating variable renewable sources, such as solar and wind, into the grid: their intermittent nature.
The ADB had previously extended a credit facility of USD 150 million to Sri Lanka, aimed specifically at upgrading the transmission and distribution infrastructure to better handle renewable power generation. Unlike traditional fossil-fuel plants or large hydropower stations, solar and wind installations are subject to fluctuations in output, depending on weather and time of day.
Without appropriate grid support, these fluctuations can trigger voltage instability and potentially cause cascading failures across the system.
Battery storage offers a critical solution to this problem. BESS installations can respond to imbalances in supply and demand within milliseconds, helping to smooth out short-term fluctuations and improve overall grid reliability. In doing so, they act as a buffer—storing excess energy when supply is high and releasing it when demand rises or generation dips.
