Sri Lanka’s 22 million people hit by six-hour blackout as grid shuts down

Sri Lanka experienced a national electricity blackout lasting six hours on Saturday, after the national grid unexpectedly shut down. The outage occurred around noon and persisted until dusk, leaving the country of 22 million people without grid power. The state electricity authority reported that supplies were gradually restored in stages across the island.

Energy Minister Anura Karunathilaka stated that the cause of the major breakdown remains under investigation, but engineers suspect an imbalance caused by high solar power generation and low demand due to a weekend holiday. The grid was restored after authorities encouraged rooftop solar system owners to disconnect their systems to stabilize the grid.

This incident echoes a similar outage in February 2025, when solar power generation exceeded consumption on a sunny Sunday, taking over six hours to resolve. Sri Lanka's solar power capacity stands at just over 3,000 megawatts, while daytime demand fluctuates between 2,000 and 2,500 megawatts. The government's strategy to boost solar power generation capacity by nearly 4,400 megawatts within three years has led to imbalances that the utility provider is finding challenging to manage.