Energy Ministry plans to buy power from industrial units
KATHMANDU, JAN 09 -
In an effort to bring down the power shortage, the Ministry of Energy (MoE) has planned to purchase electricity from captive power plants owned by factories in the country. The ministry has asked interested factories to come up with their proposed rates for the electricity to sell to the government by Jan 10.
Captive power plants refer to the backup power sources installed by factories to supply electricity during power cuts. As per the nature and need of the factory, such power is generated by burning different sources like diesel, bio-mass, coal or bagasse (the pulp that remains after the juice is extracted from sugarcane).
MoE officials said that as various factories in the country can collectively generate around 150 MW of electricity, the ministry has been considering purchasing energy from them.
The latest move by the ministry follows the government’s assurance to take all the measures necessary to ease the power crisis. The ministry had advised the government only a month ago that the best way to cut the power shortage would be to install a diesel plant.
“It is still a big question if the country can afford a diesel plant due to its high operating cost. Neither the private sector nor the government has shown any commitment to operate a diesel plant,” said a senior MoE official seeking anonymity, “Therefore, the ministry has recently opted to purchase electricity from industrial units.”
He added that some five days ago, the ministry had called a meeting of the private sector with a view to buying energy from them. “After determining how many factories will be ready to sell energy to the government and how much will be available, the ministry will move ahead with the establishment of a diesel plant.”
Another official said that as the country has seen a rise in demand for another 100 MW of electricity this year, the power that is planned to be bought from the private sector would not bring down the energy crisis noticeably.
Balananda Poudel, energy secretary, said that the ministry took the recent move to end the power crisis by utilizing local resources. He added that since the announcement, some 16 factories had responded positively to the ministry. “However, they are yet to confirm their intention, and we also don’t know about the status of their energy production,” said Poudel.
On Sunday, Prime Ministry Baburam Bhattarai asked the ministry to begin negotiations with the private sector to use its diesel generators to produce electricity.
The private sector, however, termed the ministry’s move “impractical” as by the time the process of buying energy from the industrial plants is completed, the power crisis would have ended this year.
Manish Agrawal, managing director of Lumbini Sugar Company, said that the ministry’s plan wouldn’t yield good results as it is hard to feed the energy produced by the factories into the national transmission line and the technical part of this process is also costly and complicated.
