Floating solar electric systems

The cost of photovoltaic systems has come down drastically during the last few years, thanks to rapid advances in mass production technology and the increase in demand. The interest in installation of very large systems has met with a new constraint, shortage of land.

Floating solar electric power plants is an innovative concept that provides an alternative to land based plants. Irrigation reservoirs, channels, and waste water ponds are water surfaces that have attracted floating solar systems in countries ranging from India to the United States. Most recently Australia installed the first stage of a 3.2 MW system covering 3.4 ha of water surfaces designed to generate 13.7 MWh per day. Many more large systems are planned around the world.

Sri Lanka located in the tropics receives abundant sunshine averaging about 5 kWh per sqm per day. The conversion efficiency of current photo electric devices is about 15 percent and the electrical energy generation potential from solar radiation is about 200 kWh per sqm per year.

The total electrical energy generation in Sri Lanka is projected as 15,000 GWh in 2018. Harvesting solar energy about 75 square km area is required to meet the total electrical energy needs of the country by 2018. The total land area of Sri Lanka is about 65,000 sq km. Although 75 sq km is a small fraction of the total land area, dedicating this much area for a single purpose is a difficult proposition even if all other factors are favorable.

Dry zone of Sri Lanka is scattered with irrigation tanks with large surface areas like,

Senanyaka Samudraya 76.8 sq km; Maduru Oya 62.8 sq km; Uda Walawe 34.8 sq km; Parakrama Samudraya 21.4 sq km; and Minneriya 18.7 sq km. These reservoirs and many others can provide large surface areas to harness a substantial portion of the national electrical energy requirement.

Floating solar electric systems have several other major advantages besides saving valuable land area. Floating solar systems reduce solar energy falling on the water surface and reduce the evaporation from the water surface. The water saved over one hectare is reported as about 18,000 cubic meters per year. This is an astonishing 70 percent reduction in evaporation. This saved water can cultivate 0.7 ha of paddy of two seasons. Reduced solar radiation reaching water body reduces algae growth which is a problem in many reservoirs.

The solar electric cells operate at higher efficiency at lower temperatures. Typically, reduction in i° C in operating temperature increases efficiency by about 0.5%. Solar cells floating over vast water surfaces are cooler and operate more efficiently than land based cells and generate about 5% more electricity from the same incident radiation. Much higher improvements in efficiency are reported. Floating systems will be less prone to dust contamination and cleaning would be easier with readily available water supply.

Solar energy plants at distant locations need to be connected to the national grid for transmission. High tension lines and substations are costly components of the overall system. Some dry zone reservoirs, like Senanayake Samudraya and Uda Walawe already have national grid connections as part of the hyd ro e l e c t r i c system infrastructure. It should be possible for the solar plants to share the same infrastructure. Additional hydroelectric systems may become economically feasible in more dry zone reservoirs in combination with floating solar plants.

Solar radiation is available only during the daytime but the high demand for electricity is during the night. This situation can be addressed by pumped other hand, turned the tables and portrayed themselves -- the most privileged community in Sri Lanka -- as the victims of the SinhalaBuddhist majority. The cover-up of their crimes against their own people is the biggest propaganda coup next to that of the Jewish holocaust. The reality, however, is that the Vellala cruelty to the low- caste storage hydro systems that can be incorporated when solar power systems are integrated with hydroelectric reservoirs. This technology is well developed in advanced countries and round- trip efficiencies over 70% are reported for newer pumped storage hydro systems.

Floating solar electric systems in scenic reservoirs could also include recreational facilities like boating, fishing, and picnic areas which could generate additional revenue.

This write-up was submitted to Public Utilities Commission in September 2015 for inclusion in the long-term generation plan.

(The author is an engineer residing on Kandy. He can be contacted at jatalm@ live.com) Tamils has no parallel either in the Bible Belt of America against the Afro-Americans or the indigenous S. Africans confined to apartheid ghettoes. For instance, in segregated America the Afro- Americans could ride in the seats reserved for them in the back of the bus while the whites had the privilege of sitting in the front. But in Jaffna the low-castes were allotted only the “buck” seat – i. e., the floor between the aisle seats of the bus. They could not sit at the same level in any place in the bus with that of the high-castes. That is how low the Vellalas placed their fellow Tamils in Jaffna.

Prof. Bryan Pfaffenberger of the Syracuse University, USA, produced magisterial studies of the Jaffna caste system, in which he detailed the misery of low-castes. In Political Construction of Defensive Nationalism : The 1968 Temple Entry Crisis in Sri Lanka he wrote : “In Jaffna in the 1940s and 1950s, for instance, minority Tamils were forbidden to enter or live near temples: to draw water from the wells of high-caste families; to enter laundries, barber shops, or taxis; to keep women in seclusion and protect them by enacting domestic rituals; to wear shoes; to sit in bus seats; to attend school; to cover the upper part of the body; to wear gold earrings; if male, to cut one’s hair; to use umbrellas; to own a bicycle or car; to cremate the dead; or to convert to Christianity or Buddhism.”

Compare this to the hue and cry they raised to high heaven about the Sinhala Only Act of 1956 which would have affected, if at all, only the Vellala high-caste in government service. The champions of the Tamil masses, the Marxists, the Churchmen, the NGO-allied academics, and fashionable pro-Tamil (Vellala) pundits turned a blind eye to the insufferable indignities imposed by the Vellalas. This gave the Vellalas the opportunity to turn their guns on the Sinhala-Buddhists who had given to all layers of Tamils what the Tamil leadership of Jaffna refused to give their own people.

Daniel is one rare Tamil intellectual who did not swallow the racist rhetoric. Driven by his personal experiences, he penetrated deep into the historical suffering of the Tamil masses which the other intellectuals refused to see. The refusal of our intellectuals to examine critically the Vellala politics that warped Jaffna society has strengthened and solidified their mistaken belief that the Tamils have been the victims of the majority. Daniel is the only Marxist who had the guts to unmask the Right-wing Tamils and the Left-wing Sinhala mytho-maniacs who diverted attention from Vellala evils to Sinhala-Buddhists. In siding with the Vellala masters of Jaffna the Left- wingers and the liberals served the most cruel ruling class ever to darken the pages of Sri Lankan history. They used the vocabulary, the theories and concepts available in human rights, Marxism, Leninism etc., to serve the Vellala caste/class, abandoning their moral responsibility to stand up for the Tamil masses.

Daniel, however, remained faithful to his Marxist tenets. He identified the Vellalas, the ruling caste/ class, as the enemy of the Tamils. He steadfastly refuses to conform to the communal cries of the Vellala elite. Why? Perhaps, as a Turumbar, his memory of Vellala servitude ran deep in him. Can he be blamed? Consider the way in which the Jaffna Vellalas treated the slaves. Jaffna had the most number of slaves. The following statistics of the slaves were cited by Bishop Jebanesan from the Census of 1837 in his book The American Mission and Modern Education in Jaffna (Kumaran Book House, 2013): Western Province – Male: 393; Female 332 Southern Province – Male: 432; Female 342 Eastern Province – Male: 12; Female: Nil Central Province – Male 687; Female 694 Northern Province – Male: 12,600; Female: 11,910 – (p. 157) The Vellalas controlled and kept nearly 25,000 slaves in line by cracking the whip over their backs. They were slave-drivers who refused to give even a drop of water drawn from their wells. Daniel’s memory of these experiences of his ancestors would have been sharpened by his 1968 experiences at Maviddapuram Temple “where (low-caste) protestors conducting a satyagraha were attacked by Vellalars using iron rods and sandfilled bottles...” - ( p. 296, Mirage, Afterword ( 2), Richard Young.) Amidst all this, who can forget Prof. C. Suntheralingam, a caste fanatic, walking up and down the inner courts of Maviddapuram Temple threatening to bash with his walking stick any low-caste pariah who dared to step inside the outermost court of the Temple!

The Vellala obscenities portrayed in Mirage make a mockery of the Vellala claim to be the victims of the Sinhalese majority. The horrors of the Vellala crimes against their own exploited people condemn the Vellalas as a brutal caste/class that showed no mercy to the non-Vellala Tamils of Jaffna. Worst was when the Vellalas, quoting Hindu texts, assumed the divine right to oppress and exploit their fellow-Tamils as slaves. Their contempt for their own people was displayed when they categorised a segment of their own people as pariahs who were kept out of high-caste Vellala society. Some of them were forbidden to walk even in daylight. The Turumbars, for instance, were allowed to walk only in the night just in case they should pollute the purity of Vellala eyes. No other community suffered the humiliating indignities as the outcasts of Jaffna society at the hands of their Vellala masters. And no one is better qualified to document the agonies of the oppressed Tamils than K. Daniel, a Turumbar.

Daniel’s Mirage runs on several layers of meaning. Many of its layers are yet to be explored – later. (Publishers: Kumaran Book House, No. 39, 36th Lane,

Wellawatta)