State funds for pilot project to draw power from the sea

A pilot project to harness electricity from sea energy will get underway immediately after the Minister of Power and Energy Ravi Karunanayake accepted the challenge thrown down by inventor Duncan Wickramasinghe that he will be able to generate energy from wave power.

Mr. Wickramasinghe had charged successive governments in the past of ignoring proposals presented by him over the years to turn sea energy into electricity. He said in last week’s Business Times that the current power crisis could have been averted if previous Governments had men of vision who could have understood his proposal of harnessing wave power.

Having read the story in the Business Times, Minister Karunanayake invited Mr. Wickramasinghe for a meeting on Tuesday where he said the Government would give a one million rupees grant – as requested by Mr. Wickramasinghe – towards the project.

“We want to see if he will walk the talk,” Mr. Karunanayake said. “He challenged the Government and we have accepted it by giving him this grant. We have given him the opportunity to prove himself right and we want him to start building a pilot project immediately.”

Mr. Wickramasinghe was happy with the quick response from the Government and said he would need three months to build the contraption that would be able to turn wave energy into electricity.

“I’m very happy that this Government has accepted my proposal. I first made it back in 1979 and it has taken 40 years before anyone in power has been serious about it, and shown me the money. This money will be placed in a Trust until everyone can see that this idea is practical and w o r k a b l e , ” M r. Wickramasinghe pointed out.

Put simply, his idea is to build a contraption with movable arms attached to a wheel which in turn will be connected to a dynamo. When the up-and-down motion of the waves hit the movable arms, it would move in a similar fashion turning the wheel and generating energy.

“The meeting I had with the Minister was brief. But as soon as he heard my concept, he agreed to advance the money and also provide a list of people. I will start immediately on this project and prove that my idea is workable,” Mr. Wickramasinghe added.

The 70- year- old inventor has asked for a small team of people to work on the project including an electrical engineer, a civil engineer, a mechanical engineer and a couple of masons, carpenters and welders to build a plant capable of generating 50KWH to the national grid from the sea.