Sri Lanka suffers nationwide electricity blackout

Sri Lanka experienced a nationwide electricity blackout on Saturday, with the national grid tripping, potentially due to excess solar power generation, according to officials. The country was without grid power for over two hours, and there is currently no clear timeline for when electricity would be restored. The state-run Electricity Distribution Lanka (EDL) stated that engineers are working to fix a fault affecting the entire grid, and they suspect that the breakdown was caused by excess solar power.

Energy Minister Anura Karunathilaka announced that authorities aim to restore supplies stage by stage. In a statement, he requested rooftop solar system owners to disconnect their systems until further instructions to support the restoration efforts. The blackout occurred on a bright, sunny Sunday in February 2025 when solar power generation exceeded consumption.

Sri Lanka has an installed solar power capacity of just over 3,000 megawatts, while daytime demand ranges from 2,000 to 2,500 megawatts. Tax concessions have encouraged consumers to switch to solar power and sell their surplus electricity to the grid, creating imbalances that the utility provider is struggling to manage. The government aims to increase solar power generation capacity to nearly 4,400 megawatts within three years, which is a 388 percent increase from 2024.

Brief written by urgent.news from New Straits Times's own syndicated text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.