Sri Lanka orders solar owners off the grid after another nationwide blackout
A similar outage in 2025 was blamed partly on heavy reliance on solar power, which left the grid without enough stabilizing inertia.
Sri Lanka's National System Operator (NSO) has told all owners of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems to disconnect them from the grid "until further notice" after a nationwide blackout Saturday, Emiliano Bellini reported Monday in pv magazine.
Power went out at about 11:45 a.m. on Oct. 17, and local media reported that the operator blamed unspecified instability in the transmission network. Supply returned to most areas by about 7:50 p.m. It was not clear when solar systems would be allowed to feed power back into the grid.
The outage echoes a blackout on Feb. 9, 2025. The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) later found that a fault at the Panadura grid substation triggered that collapse at a time when solar supplied more than 50% of demand, leaving the grid with too little inertia, the stabilizing effect of large spinning generators, to withstand the disturbance. Authorities also told rooftop solar owners to disconnect during that restoration.
The repeat shows the strain on grids that add solar quickly without matching investment in stability. Sri Lanka's rooftop solar capacity reached 1.94 gigawatts by the end of 2025, while demand in March 2026 averaged roughly 2,400 to 2,500 megawatts.
This brief is based on an article published Oct. 19, 2026, by Emiliano Bellini in pv magazine. Read the original: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/10/19/sri-lanka-asks-pv-system-owners-to-disconnect-after-nationwide-blackout/
This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by an editor before publication.
