• Energy experts warn that individual home batteries could triple national dollar spending
• Opposition questions how 1,392 MW renewable targets can be met  

Concessions will be granted for home solar battery systems through the 2027 Budget, Minister of Energy Anura Karunathilaka told Parliament last Thursday (5). 

He said that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake would announce the concession scheme on 12 November when he presents the budget.

The announcement comes amid recurring power interruptions and a debate over whether rooftop solar is destabilising the national grid. It has drawn criticism from energy experts and questions from the Opposition.

Raising the matter in Parliament, Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK) Parliamentary Group Leader Shanakiyan Rasamanickam questioned how these targets could be met under the existing restrictions. He asked why large renewable energy projects in the Batticaloa District had received approvals while households that had registered for rooftop solar last year were still awaiting permission.

Rasamanickam also raised the suspension of previously available incentives and concessions, and a change under which payments would be linked to electricity generated during daytime hours. He said this could reduce producers’ earnings and lengthen the time taken to recover their investments. He added that the household-level generation framework announced in an earlier budget had yet to be fully implemented.

Responding, Minister Karunathilaka said that payment arrangements for renewable energy producers would be revised and existing difficulties addressed. He added that special incentives for new investors would be introduced through the forthcoming budget.

The MP also sought details on tariff revisions since the beginning of 2025. The Minister confirmed that tariffs had been revised four times, twice in 2025 and twice in 2026, and maintained that consumers had not incurred additional charges as a result.

Meanwhile, electrical engineer and environmentalist Asoka Abeygunawardana rejected claims by official quarters that rooftop solar was behind the instability. He told The Sunday Morning that recent countrywide outages had been initiated by sudden trips at the Norochcholai coal-fired power station, where the loss of a single unit had snowballed into a cascading drop exceeding 500 MW.

“The popular belief being spread is that rooftop solar causes instability, forcing major power stations to trip and shut down,” he said. “That is a complete falsehood. System blackouts began occurring well before rooftop solar took off after the Covid-19 pandemic.”

He charged that the National System Operator (NSO) remained practically blind to local generation because its digital meters lacked real-time communication capabilities. He also noted that despite the launch of the Soorya Bala Sangramaya nearly a decade ago, State utilities had failed to integrate Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) or complete planned storage pilots.

Abeygunawardana warned that recent regulatory rollbacks, including cuts to export tariffs and the suspension of the Net Accounting and Net Plus billing frameworks, were dismantling a domestic industry that supported over 8,000 jobs and hundreds of small enterprises.

He also cautioned against proposals to promote individual home battery systems through tax concessions, saying decentralised household purchases would needlessly triple national dollar expenditure compared with centralised, distribution-level battery units.

He urged the Government to mandate solar on every viable rooftop by 2035, supported by pumped-storage hydro development at Victoria-Randenigala and distribution-level frequency stabilisers. 

Combined with fleet-wide electric vehicle adoption and Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) charging, he argued, this would allow Sri Lanka to power its economy without committing public funds to long-term fossil Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) infrastructure or prospective nuclear plants, which he said contradicted national 100% renewable energy pledges.

Karunathilaka in an early occasion said that the Government had taken active steps to double rooftop solar generation capacity. He noted that rooftop solar stood at 867 MW in 2024 and had risen to 1,674 MW by 2025.

He described BESS as a vital upcoming development to ensure maximum use of solar energy across the grid. He said that a 560 MW battery system would be built by the end of next year and a total of 1,200 MW of storage would be in place within two years. The systems will capture surplus power and release it during the peak demand window between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m.

The Minister also announced renewable energy targets of 642 MW in 2027, 300 MW in 2028, and 450 MW in 2029, which amounted to 1,392 MW over the three years.