Sri Lanka's state-ru
n Ceylon Electricity Board has awarded a 35MegaWatt 82 million US dollar hydro power plant deal to China, power minister Champika Ranawaka said.The run-of-the-river plant known as the Broadlands project on Sri Lanka's Kelani River will be built by China National Electric Equipment Corporation (CNEEC) and connected to the grid by 2014.
"The engineering estimate for the project was 102 million US dollar but the contractor is building it for 82 million US dollars," minister Ranawaka told reporters after signing the construction contract with CNEEC.
The CEB also required the bidder to arrange finance.
The project will be 90 percent financed by the Industrial and Construction Bank of China on a 15-year floating rate loan at 220 basis points above the London interbank offered rate and will also include three years grace.
The balance 10 percent funds will come from state-run People's Bank.
Minister Ranawaka said the plant will generate 126GigaWatt-hours of energy a year.
The project involves the building of a 114 meter long, 24 meter high gravity dam across the Maskeli Oya tributary of the Kelani River complex at Polpitiya.
Another smaller diversion weir 48 meters long and 19 meters high will be built across the Kehelgamu Oya and water brought through an 850 meter tunnel to the main reservoir. The main tunnel to the generators will be 3.2 kilometres long.
The Broadlands project is the last plant in the so-called Laxapana cascade power station complex on the Kelani River system which was started 50 years ago.
The CEB is separately rehabilitating plants in part of the Laxapana complex at a cost of 6.97 billion rupees which will add 14 MW of additional capacity and in another part at a cost of 4.2 billion rupees with Austrian suppliers credit, officials said.
