Description

Transition to a Greener Electricity System was a beneficial webinar organized by IEEE Student Branch University of Ruhuna with the collaboration of Power and Energy Society (PES) the Student Branch University of Ruhuna. The webinar was focusing on all the students in the electrical engineering department and 1st-year students. This was held successfully on 12 th September 2021 through the zoom platform with a participation of more than 85 participants around one and half hours. The theme of the webinar was Transition to a Greener Electricity System of the new session of VRE Integration and solutions. The speaker of the webinar is Eng Randika Wijekoon who is currently serving as an electrical engineer at CEB in the Transmission & generation planning branch. And with all his experience of his career and academic life he addressed the audience and most of the participants were motivated and inspired with respect to the feedback. Eng Randika Wijekoon briefly discusses the importance of electricity sector planning such as long lead-time, capital intensive projects and the preparation of the investment programme. Also, he further discusses the LTGEP (Long Term Generation Expansion Plan ) relevant to 2022-2024 which mainly aims at the national target of carbon emission and stipulated policy guidelines. And he further explains the Renewable energy grid integration system like solar wind and pumped storage. That LTGEP project mainly targets increasing renewable energy progress and decreasing the natural gas which is used to generate electricity and reducing coal and oil-based capacity that convert to natural gasses. By 2030 CEB plans to 70% share by renewable energy that helps to reduce average carbon emission factor around 120 kg/kWh. So Eng Randika Wijekoon further explains the importance of increasing the share of renewable energy So 70% share of renewable energy in Sri Lanka has to increase wind capacity 1000 MW to 1500 MW and solar capacity to 2000 MW to 4000 MW. He explains the challenges of Variable Renewable Energy such as variability and uncertainty level of solar and wind energy, Inverter based resources like wind type one and two, high cost based on resource location due to transmission and voltage control. And he explained what happened to the solar project in Poneryn and Siyabalanduwa. So this is another successful event for students who have a micro conception of their career. So that webinar was a good opportunity for everyone who was willing to have a successful career in the electrical field and also, the mission of fostering the enthusiasm of upskilling the career of the undergraduates.