Load-shedding goes up to 14 hours a day
KATHMANDU, JAN 19 -
The government’s efforts to limit load-shedding to 12 hours a day have gone in vain, with the Nepal Electricity Authority ( NEA ) increasing daily power outage to 14 hours from Saturday.
The NEA said it was forced to hike the outage hours after India slashed electricity supply by 30MW from Monday. India had been supplying 115MW electricity to Nepal. Earlier, India had promised to provide an additional 55MW for this winter.
The present power demand in Nepal stands at 1,025MW, but there is a supply of just 425MW, according to NEA . “Low production at home due to decreasing water level in rivers and India cutting down the supply forced us to hike load shedding hours,” said Bhuwan Kumar Chhetri, chief of system operation department at NEA .
About three weeks ago, NEA had increased load-shedding from the 10 to 12 hours a day, citing decreased water level in rivers. A few months ago, the government had introduced the Load Shedding Reduction Action Plan which sought to limit power cuts to below 12 hours a day by increasing electricity import from India, operating thermal plants and controlling leakage.
However, the government’s plan received a setback after India started cutting supply. On Jan 14, the southern neighbour completely halted power supply through the 32KV transmission lines of Raksual-Birgunj, Sitamadhi-Jaleshwor, Kataiya-Rajbiraj. The supply of 20MW electricity through the 132KV Kataiya-Duhabi transmission line was also cut later.
Last winter, Nepal had imported up to 145MW electricity from India, when load-shedding had reached up to 16 hours a day. For this winter, the government had planned early construction of the 400KV Dhalkebar-Mujjaffapur cross-border transmission line, generating 40MW energy from diesel plants, importing 200MW additional energy from India and purchasing electricity from captive plants of local industrial units. However, not even a single plan has so far been implemented properly.
Source: The Kathmandu Post
