ABB announced it has won orders worth about $40 million from Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) to upgrade the power infrastructure in Sri Lanka.
The company will supply two new 220-kilovolt (kV) substations to be constructed at Polpitiya in the Central Province and Padukka near the capital, Colombo, in the Western Province and upgrade an existing substation at Pannipitiya, a suburb of Colombo.
ABB will design, engineer, supply and commission the substations and provide equipments such as high-voltage air-insulated switchgear, medium-voltage indoor gas-insulated switchgear, power transformers, IEC 61850-compliant protection and substation automation, and fiber-optic communications systems.
The project is scheduled for completion in 2017.
“These substations will boost transmission capacity and address Sri Lanka’s growing demand for electricity,” said Claudio Facchin, head of ABB’s Power Systems division. “We are pleased to support the country in developing its power infrastructure, improving reliability of supplies and increasing energy efficiency.”
The project is being implemented as part of the country’s Clean Energy and Network Efficiency Improvement Project, which aims to strengthen the national grid by increasing capacity and enabling greater integration of renewables as well as reducing losses and enhancing power reliability.
Sri Lanka has set a target to install additional power generation capacity of over 2,500 megawatts (MW) and to increase the share of renewable energy in the national grid to about 20 percent.
This contract is the second major business development for ABB in the subcontinent recently. Earlier in December ABB announced it has won orders worth $55 million to boost utility infrastructure in eastern states of Bihar and West Bengal in India.
Rajani Baburajan