Saving Energy, Saving Water, Making History

Built some 2,500 years ago on a seaside cliff in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, Thiru Koneswaran is the country’s oldest Hindu temples. Razed to the ground by the Portuguese in 1624, it has remained an active place of worship despite its disrepair, and is today in the process of a slow but steady reconstruction.

In addition to its prominence in Trincomalee’s history, Thiru Koneswaran is one of the region’s major water consumers. Devotees visiting the temple need water for drinking as well as for Hindu ceremonial activities such as washing of the legs and puja, ritual offerings to Hindu deities for blessings. Due to Trincomalee’s poor water service – not to mention the temple’s antiquity – this holy site has suffered chronic water shortages for years, a fate which greatly hampered its daily functions.

Watergy at Work in Sri Lanka

Trincomalee’s water dilemma is not uncommon in Sri Lanka, where inefficient infrastructures drain energy and water resources in many cities and towns.

To improve the efficiency of Sri Lanka’s water service delivery, the Alliance introduced its patented Watergy program to the country’s National Water Supply & Drainage Board (NWSDB) in 2002. Supported by USAID/US-AEP Program, the Sri Lanka program facilitated Watergy’s trademark activities, such as forming municipal partnerships and infrastructure adjustments.

Paramount among Watergy’s goals is to extend energy and water savings beyond the program’s lifetime. It accomplishes this by training local utility personnel to make improvements in water service, which they can then share with their local municipalities.

Water Efficiency Training

In Sri Lanka, Alliance/Watergy consultants trained 25 engineers including six senior techno-managers from NWSDB. These 6 engineers formed the Energy Saving Unit (ESU) at NWSDB, which took on the task with improving the energy efficiency of NWSDB nationwide operations. In the pilot stage of the program, the unit administered an energy audit in a section of the Ambatale Plant, a water plant in Colombo, and in turn trained an additional 110 technicians.

One of the ESU members was N.M.S. Kalinga, an engineer from the Trincomalee district. Armed with newfound skills and hands-on experience gained from his Watergy training while he was at the Ambatale plant, Kalinga carried the knowledge to his new assignment at the Kantale Water Supply Plant in Trincomalee.

There, he immediately discovered a problem: not only was the water plant burdened with outdated technology, but insufficient funds meant that any investment would have to be modest at best. So with only 1.3 million rupees to spend (about USD $13,000) Kalinga was able to make minor equipment changes, like installing new pumps and motors to increase energy savings and improve the efficacy of water distribution.

With these changes, the Kantale plant achieved monthly energy savings of 194,370 kWh in less than a year’s time. Meanwhile, the electric utility that powered the Kantale Plant was able to redirect the savings and supply electricity to 4,000 additional households in the Trincomalee area.

Saving Energy and Water – and the Temple

Kalinga’s adjustments helped the plant achieve energy savings of 45 percent while increasing water services in some areas of Trincomalee from one hour a day to uninterrupted access. The Thiru Koneswaran temple was one of these beneficiaries.

“We had water supply problems at the Koneswaran temple premises for many years; we even went without service for years on end,” recalls the temple’s president, M.K. Sellarajah. “Since the NWSDB arranged for water supply to the temple, we now have continuous water service.” Today, water is now available on a daily basis for the ceremonies and rituals endemic to the temple’s sacred history.

July 25, 2009, marked Kalinga's 30th year of service at NWSDB. He is now deputy general manager of two water supply plants in the provinces of Sabaragamuwa and Uva. Since the end of the Sri Lanka Watergy program in November 2007, NWSDB’s Energy Savings Unit has continued its work; Kalinga remains one of its key members, and has trained engineers interested in energy management.

So what has kept him with NWSDB so long? The ability “to supply drinking water to the poor with at minimum cost,” he says. “By saving energy, this can be done.”