What caused the nationwide power breakdown in Sri Lanka?

The entire nation of Sri Lanka was left without power on Monday, Aug 17, in an hours-long outage following an “unspecified failure” at a major power plant.

The outage hit the entire nation of 21 million people at around midday, and although power returned to some parts of the country after six hours

It is said that the power cut was due to ‘technical failure’ at Kerawalapitiya power plant near Colombo

The oil-fired Kerawalapitiya power grid provides 50 per cent of Sri Lanka’s electricity supply. Sri Lanka generates just over half of its electricity through thermal power. The remainder comes from hydro and wind power.

According to Indian Express, After visiting the plant, Alahapperuma ordered his ministry to look into the outage and file a report within a week.

Also, the report states that it is the second time in less than five years that the nation of 2.1 crore people has faced a complete power outage. In March 2016, a large system breakdown caused a blackout of over eight hours.