Colombo, Sri Lanka – Sri Lankans were left quite literally in the dark today as a sudden nationwide power outage plunged the island into disruption. The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) has assured the public that efforts are underway to restore electricity, but full restoration may take several hours.
While power outages aren’t uncommon, the reason behind today’s blackout sparked both confusion and amusement. According to Power Minister Jayakodi, the culprit was none other than a rogue monkey, which allegedly made contact with the Panadura grid substation, causing a major disruption to the electricity grid. The Minister stated that the unexpected primate-powered interference led to a complete system failure, affecting supply across the country.
However, the Ministry of Power and Energy later took a more cautious approach, referring to the incident as an “emergency at the Panadura substation,” without explicitly confirming the Minister’s monkey theory.
As restoration efforts continue, citizens have taken to social media to express both frustration and humor over the situation. While engineers work tirelessly to restore power, many Sri Lankans are left wondering: was it truly an unfortunate animal encounter or just a convenient scapegoat swinging into action?
One sub-station failure leading to the whole grid collapsing does not sound at all credible to me.
Minister Jayakody is telling fairy stories, I think.
The previous news item of an unexpected shut-down at the coal fired plant seems a far more plausible reason for a grid-wide event.
It is credible. Earthing failure in the grid on one location can affect the national grid. Voltage instability. However its not clear that’s the case in this incident.