⚡ Rooftop Solar Shift: Sri Lanka Confronts Grid Stability Costs 📈

• Grid System Fragility: Recent power grid disturbances forced the National System Operator to request rooftop solar owners to switch off panels, highlighting growing integration risks. While over 1,000 MW of rooftop solar capacity has been added since 2018, the automatic load-shedding scheme has not been updated since that year. • Generation & Cost Imbalances: Low rotational inertia from solar units increases grid vulnerability during power plant outages. To balance midday solar surpluses and meet peak evening demand, thermal oil generation reliance surged on a single Sunday from 0.8% (Oct 11) to 23.7% (Oct 18), driving up overall system generation costs for all consumers. • Infrastructural Limits: Grid-scale battery storage capacity currently sits at ~30 MW—representing roughly 1% of the 2,800 MW evening peak demand—limiting rapid storage fixes. • Equity & Net Metering: Under current net metering, prosumers selling low-value daytime solar output offset high-cost nighttime power consumption. This dynamic shifts grid balancing and backup reserve costs onto non-solar consumers. • Global & Local Regulatory Trends: Following global adjustments in California, Pakistan, and the Netherlands, policy debates focus on transitioning from free net metering toward cost-reflective pricing, requiring prosumers to fund backup power or install dedicated battery storage.