Sri Lanka blackout over 2 hours amid possible excess solar

World Oct 17, 2026

Sri Lanka just went through a countrywide blackout that lasted more than two hours, and the surprising reason was possibly too much solar power flooding the grid.

Engineers rushed to fix things, while the energy minister asked people with rooftop solar panels to unplug for a bit so electricity could be restored faster.

Sri Lanka's solar tops 3,000 MW

Thanks to tax breaks, Sri Lanka's solar capacity has shot past 3,000 megawatts, even more than what's needed during the day.

This isn't the first time it's caused problems; a similar overload happened last year too.

Now, the government plans to boost capacity even further to nearly 4,400 megawatts in hopes of balancing out supply and avoiding future blackouts.