Kathmandu gets a power cut-free New Year, thanks to India

world

Updated: Jan 01, 2017 20:35 IST

After probably a decade, Nepal’s capital celebrated the New Year without any power cuts, thanks to India.

As part of Nepal moving towards a future free from power cuts, Kathmandu was declared load-shedding free from Saturday night, with 40 mw of power supplied by India.

India had agreed to augment 80 mw electricity to Nepal from 1st of January, half of which is for Kathmandu. The other 40 mw was distributed outside the Nepal capital.

Nepal began to face power crisis after the water level of many of its rivers that originated from Himalayas shrank significantly.

Officials from Nepal’s Energy Ministry and Nepal Electrify Authority (NEA), the state-owned electricity utility, said that power provided by India has been split in two portions- inside Kathmandu and outside the capital- in a bid to make the country free from power outages.

In the past, during the deep winter, Nepal used to undergo daily power cuts lasting over 15 hours.

Prabal Adhikari, spokesperson of NEA, said that electricity purchased from India’s NVVN Ltd was distributed in Kathmandu from Saturday onwards.

From Saturday, another 13 mw of electricity has been added by a domestic project, Madi Hydropower.

In the next 20 days, upgradation of Nepal-India cross border transmission line in Muzaffarpur (India)---Dhalkebar( Nepal) is expected to be completed.

India is likely to supply additional 80 mw electricity from February 1.

With this, the total supply of electricity to Nepal from India will be near 400 mw.

After completion of up gradation in Nepali side in Dhalkebar by March 2017, Nepal can import additional 150 mw, which will help the country to be free from load-shedding.

Besides this, Nepal is preparing to import 50 mw each from two other cross border lines- Raxual—Parwanipur and Kataiya—Kushaha .

The country is also preparing to procure another 40 mw from Tanakpur transmission line.

Thre are also plans to generate more energy from domestic power houses by improving the energy leakages and introducing alternative energy plans.