What happened

Sri Lanka's Ceylon Electricity Board reported that a monkey came into contact with a grid transformer at the Panadura substation in Western Province on 9 February 2025, causing an imbalance in the electrical system that cascaded into a nationwide power outage. Power was restored progressively over approximately five to six hours. The Ceylon Electricity Board's explanation drew significant public commentary and renewed criticism from energy experts and commentators, including Sri Lankan media, about the vulnerability and outdated state of the national grid's protective systems, given that a single localized wildlife-related fault at one substation was able to bring down electricity supply across the entire island. This is documented as an accidental equipment/wildlife-intrusion failure, not an attack, and follows earlier nationwide grid failures recorded in this dataset in August 2020 and during the 2022 economic-crisis rolling blackouts.

When cited sources give different casualty, damage or spill figures for this event, they’re reported side by side above rather than merged into one number. See how confidence levels work.