Who owns the sun as Sri Lanka hands renewable energy future to corporate handful

Sri Lanka’s green energy revolution is being quietly stripped from ordinary citizens and handed over to a handful of powerful corporations.

A sweeping policy shift by the Ministry of Power and Energy threatens to destroy household energy independence while creating a lucrative corporate oligopoly.

On September 11, the Ministry terminated the popular Net Metering and Net Accounting schemes.

Critics warn that the replacement framework fundamentally dismantles the economic case for families to invest in rooftop solar.

Under the previous system, rooftop solar gave consumers a direct shield against surging electricity tariffs.

Households could generate power during peak daylight hours and offset their total electricity consumption, including expensive evening usage.

That model allowed families to recover their solar investment in less than five years.

The new policy flips that equation entirely to the detriment of the consumer.

Households must now sell all their solar generation to the Ceylon Electricity Board at a low rate of around Rs. 23 per unit.

At the same time, those same families are forced to buy electricity back from the grid at residential rates surging past Rs. 42 per unit.

This massive price gap creates a crippling financial penalty for ordinary citizens.

A standard five-kilowatt home system that once wiped out monthly power bills now earns minimal fixed revenue while leaving families exposed to soaring grid tariffs.

Payback periods for home solar systems will now stretch past a decade.

For middle-class families already hit hard by high living costs, financing rooftop solar has become virtually unviable.

Attractiveness drops even further under the Net Plus scheme, which reportedly caps contracts at just 12 years.

State officials argue that rapid rooftop expansion has overloaded substations and threatened overall grid stability during peak daylight hours.

Authorities also contend that seven million non-solar consumers should not bear the fixed costs of maintaining the national grid alone.

While grid stability is a legitimate engineering challenge, the government's response systematically penalises household generators.

There is no sound economic reason why fixing grid stability must require crushing citizen-led renewable investment.

The most damning aspect of this reform is taking shape in the utility-scale battery storage sector.

Recent disclosures and opposition probes reveal that major developers, including WindForce PLC and Vidullanka PLC, swept 13 out of 16 units in one procurement round and 23 out of 25 in another.

Such heavy corporate concentration in state-awarded energy contracts demands immediate and aggressive public scrutiny.

While utility battery storage is vital to capture surplus renewable power, placing that infrastructure in so few hands builds a dangerous cartel.

An industry meant to empower millions of decentralised citizen generators is being converted into a private corporate fiefdom.

The crucial issue facing the nation is not whether battery storage is necessary for the grid.

The real question is whether Sri Lanka’s clean energy transition will benefit millions of citizens or enrich a small corporate elite.

Without strict procurement transparency and protected incentives for home storage, the country risks trading one broken fossil fuel system for a corporate monopoly.

Sri Lanka is entering an era where the sun shines on everyone, but the profits belong strictly to a powerful few.