One of the points discussed during the recent visit of the Sri Lankan President, Anura Dissanayake, was the power transmission link between Sri Lanka and India. This is an old, long-discussed proposal, but the fact that this was taken up at the highest levels suggests that the project, which began in 2002, is one whose time has come.

The international transmission link, estimated to cost about ₹10,000 crore today, was actually given up in 2011, after the Indian public sector transmission major, Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd, reviewed a study conducted by a company called Nexant with the support of USAID, and found it unviable. But those were different times, when the imperatives were different. Back then the idea was to export electricity from the wind-rich Tamil Nadu to Sri Lanka. In 2018, a study conducted by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) found out that the transmission link could save Sri Lanka as much as $180 million annually, from avoided local generation of high-cost power.

The situation has changed now, with India’s thirst for renewable energy and the island nation’s ability to provide it. An ADB-funded fresh study in October 2022 by PriceWaterhouseCoopers has breathed life into the moribund project. It was inevitable that the project would be revived given that India is championing the One Sun, One World, One Grid initiative, whose intention is to build a global network so that at any point in time electricity from wherever sun shines can flow to where the sun does not. The project proponents want to build a HVDC line between Habarana in Sri Lanka and New Madurai in India, across a 120 km stretch of sea. While the project has been taken up at the highest political and diplomatic levels, experts are poring over multiple technical options for the project — mainly, how much of it should be undersea cables.

It is in India’s interests to push for early completion of the transmission link. Sri Lanka has immense wind energy potential. A couple of decades back, an NREL study put the country’s onshore wind potential at 45 GW. With today’s improved technology and lower costs, where taller windmills can catch more winds, including those blowing at lesser speeds, Sri Lanka’s wind potential is not less than 60 GW. Since the country is unlikely to need more than 10-15 GW, all the rest of it can be wheeled to India, providing green energy to Indian industries. While it is still early days to estimate how much wind power from Sri Lanka will cost, it is safe to say that it will be cheaper than Indian offshore wind power, to subsidise which the government has earmarked ₹6,853 crore. From India’s recent experience with wind-solar hybrid, whose tariffs have settled at levels lower than standalone wind, a good guess is that when solar is brought into the equation, clean energy from Sri Lanka would be an attractive option for both countries. Economic reasons apart, the transmission link will keep Sri Lanka hooked to India, geopolitically too.