Sri Lankans face power cuts after Chinese coal power generator crashes during blackout

Sri Lanka said electricity would be rationed across the island, after a Chinese-built coal power generator shut down during an hours-long nationwide blackout.

Power will be cut for nearly 3 hours every day across the country to conserve electricity, the Ceylon Electricity Board was quoted as saying in an AFP report.

A “technical fault” at a 300-MW thermal power plant near Colombo left the nation without power for up to 10 hours on Monday.

The unspecified failure also caused the 900-MW Chinese-built Norachcholai coal power plant — which generates almost one-third of Sri Lanka’s electricity — to trip.

“A coal-powered plant takes a few days to restart after a shutdown,” AFP quoted a spokesman for the board as saying.

“We will have the power cuts to conserve electricity until we are able to reconnect the coal plant at Norachcholai.”