NEA’s special plan to supply power for festivals and winter

KATHMANDU: Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) had drafted a special plan to manage electricity during the ongoing festivals and winter season.

After Kul Man Ghising, who is credited for ending the years-long load-shedding problem in the country, completed his tenure there were doubts among the general public on whether the load-shedding problem would reoccur.

However, NEA has managed to supply power continuously without any interruption as such during Dashain according to its plan of managing power supply targeting the festivals and coming winter.

NEA Acting Executive Director, Lekhnath Koirala, informed that the power utility made a special plan to manage electricity based on domestic production and demand by importing electricity from India. He said that the production from the private sector has increased and in case of insufficiency, the electricity could be imported from India due to which there will not be any problem in addressing the power demand.

NEA has projected a maximum demand of 1,550 megawatts for the coming winter. Last year, the highest demand had touched 1,370 MW. Even though NEA’s production including that of the private sector has reached 1,350 MW, only one third of it will be generated during the winter. Therefore, domestic production will be insufficient.

According to Koirala, NEA is currently generating 550 MW and the private sector 600 MW. Likewise, the water level at the Kulekhani reservoir project that can generate up to 104 megawatts of electricity is at the maximum point now.

The power utility also expects to address the power demand in the winter on the basis of the projection that the first unit of Upper Tamakoshi project, which is still under construction, will generate 76 MW of electricity in January next year and the second unit with the same capacity will generate power in February. Likewise, the third unit is expected to start generating electricity in April.

As of now, 16 MW has been generated and a further 18 MW is expected to be added in the next two months. As per NEA, it will import up to 350 MW of energy from India through the Dhalkebar-Muzaffarpur transmission line for the winter.

The authority plans to maintain load balance by managing distribution along with production. It has planned to ready all feeders and transformers and also plans to improve the distribution system in the overloaded areas.