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Power Outage In Nepal Twelve Hours A Day
By KTM Metro Reporter
January 6, 2014: The Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA): the state-run power company has imposed 12-hour power outage a day starting yesterday due to the shortage of water in the rivers that produce hydro-electricity, according to the Xinhua news.
The Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) increased power cuts from nine hours a day in mid-December to 12 hours a day for domestic consumers starting yesterday. It has been the regular business of the NEA to increase the power outage in the dry season. Nepal is one of the countries having the highest hydropower potential in the world.
The drop in the electricity generation due to the decreasing water level in the rivers has been the reasons for the power outage. With the new schedule for power outage coming effective on Sunday, Nepalis have to live without power for 84 hours a week.
"Increasing load shedding is our compulsion," Bhuwan Chettri, chief of NEA's Load Dispatch Center told Xinhua on the phone. "The power demand goes up to 1000 MW during the dry season as compared to the wet season and it is hard to balance the demand and supply chain."
It has not even been a week since Nepal's Energy Minister Umakant Jha committed to contain power woes within 12 hours a day this winter that Nepalis have received the fresh load-shedding schedule for 84 hours a week.
"This is just the beginning and the power crisis cannot be limited within only 12 hours a day in the near future," Chettri said. "At present, there is a demand for 1,100 MW a day while we have been able to supply only 575 MW to 600 MW alone." NEA projected the demand for power to go up to 1,200 MW a day during this year's dry season.
Industrial consumers have been hit hard with the new schedule. NEA sources said that the load shedding for industrial consumers have been extended to 14 hours a day. "Sadly, the 14 hour-long power cut is arranged in a single shift. Factories that used to run three shifts of operation a day have been limited to only one shift," Nepalese industrialist Pashupati Murarka told Xinhua. Nepali industries are forced to manage back up power installing diesel plants at their factory premises.
"Almost 95 percent of the industries, hotels, hospitals and academic centers among other business enterprises have their own diesel plant," said Murarka also the vice president of Federation of Nepal Chambers of Commerce and Industry. "The cost of production goes up to around 35 percent higher, if the factories are run with diesel plants," he added
Similarly, general consumers have also begun to install back-up electricity facility at their houses to avoid darkness. Nepal has already imported tens of millions of U.S. dollars worth of inverters and mini solar panels for household purposes.
Though the government had earlier announced to import 200 MW power from India to mitigate the power crisis, the process has not begun so far.
More than 80 percent of Nepal's hydro power projects are run-of-the-river power stations and power generation from these projects goes down by as much as 60 percent during the dry season.
