Ceylon Electricity Board
On 13 March 2016, Sri Lanka experienced another 7 hour island wide blackout due to a damaged transformer in the 220 kV substation at Biyagama. It is considered to be the worst nationwide power outage in 20 years. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe appointed a five-member committee to investigate the blackout. Due to initial suspicions of sabotage, President Maithripala Sirisena deployed troops to guard electrical installations until the investigation was completed. The CEB also reported that the outage caused Lakvijaya Coal Power Plant to fail, resulting in a loss of 900 Mega Watts to the National Grid. On March 23, 2016, Power and Renewable Energy Minister Ranjith Siyambalapitiya notified parliament that the reason for the power outage was a lack of regular maintenance of power installations. The engineer in charge of the Biyagama Substation had previously reported that a key transformer needed maintenance; however, no repairs were made.