Dendro Power for Industrial Print-ing Press at Wijeya Newspapers Ltd. Sri Lanka

Abstract: Wijeya Newspapers Limited (WNL) is one of the leading newspaper and magazine publish-ers in Sri Lanka. The company has their main factory (printing plant) located at Hokandara which is 15 km from Colombo City. Total power requirement of the factory is 3000 kVA (2.4 MW) and the Company’s annual energy demand is 3.8 GWh which is currently sup-plied by the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB). As a strategy of the higher management, the company is moving in to renewable power generation projects such as biomass, solar and wind energy in addition to their existing energy conservation and management practices in the factory. In order to fulfil the vision of WNL, a 2 MW alternative green and clean bio-mass energy generation facility is going to be installed as the first pilot energy project of the company. The Proposed biomass power plant site will be on the company’s own coconut plantation site and is to be within 15 to 20 km of the main electric substation in the North Western province. The goals of WNL are to develop economically viable energy produc-tion facilities using readily available renewable biomass fuel sources at an acceptable cost per kilowatt hour, to use green and clean energy in their printing operations and provide new revenue generation for their business portfolios. The Biomass power project (Dendro) will provide needed green energy supply system to their printing operations and additional revenue while providing energy in an environmentally sound manner. In addition to help-ing meet the company goals, the project will help reduce dependency on imported non-renewable energy sources in the country. In this backdrop, this research is conducted to as-sess the present situation of Dendro power generation and its applications in Sri Lanka and to evaluate the feasibility of utilizing Dendro power to meet the power requirement of the printing industry. This study concludes that Dendro power generation for the operations at WNL is economically and technically feasible and that the optimum plant capacity for this biomass fuel based electricity generating plant would be 2-5 MW. It was also revealed that there is good social acceptability for biomass based electricity generation in the local com-munity. As recommendations, the study proposes that the government takes action to inte-grate renewable energy in the national electricity generation plan.