Nepal’s power grid saturated

Nepal’s power grid saturated
eKantipur.com, 26-Dec-07
BY BIKASH SANGRAULA

Decision makers in government bodies overseeing the country's power sector are focusing their entire attention on building new power projects to address the growing power crisis.

However, little has been done to increase the capacity of the country's power transmission links to accommodate additional power.

"The national power grid already faces a power evacuation problem, owing mainly to the Bharatpur-Hetauda transmission bottleneck," said Sher Singh Bhat, chief of the Systems Operations Department of Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA).

The 70-kilometer Bharatpur-Hetauda link is the main connection linking western Nepal, where almost all power projects of the country are concentrated, and eastern Nepal, where most of the load centers lie.

Except for the 6 megawatt (MW) Puwa Khola and the 3 MW Piluwa Khola, all the hydropower projects of the country are located to the west of this transmission bottleneck. The power deficit to the east of the link has to be met by evacuating power from the west to the east through this transmission link.

"The peak power demand to the east of the link is 150 megawatts," Bhat said. The 132 kv Bharatpur-Hetauda link can transmit 90 megawatts of power at most.

Kathmandu Valley, where peak demand is 210 MW, directly consumes the power generated by projects around Kathmandu Valley, namely Khimti, Bhotekoshi, Trishuli, Devighat, Indrawati, Sunkoshi and partly Marsyangdi. These projects have direct links with the Valley.

Except for Upper Tamakoshi, all proposed projects including the 121 MW Upper Marsyangdi, the 122 megawatt Upper Seti, Nyadi, Madi and projects identified in the Kaligandaki gorge are located to the west of the Bharatpur-Hetauda transmission bottleneck.

To evacuate power generated by the under-construction 70 MW Middle Marsyangdi that is expected to start generation by the end of next year, NEA is currently changing the transmission wires of the Bharatpur-Hetauda bottleneck. However, the new, better quality wires will be just enough to accommodate power generated by Mid-Marsyangdi.

The other projects under construction, namely the 30 MW Chamelia and the 14 MW Kulekhani III will fortunately not face problems from the bottleneck as power generated by Chamelia will be consumed in western Nepal itself, while power generated by Kulekhani III will be directly evacuated to Hetauda.

However, most of the power projects in pipeline will need the Bharatpur-Hetauda link for power evacuation.

Uttar Kumar Shrestha, NEA's deputy managing director, said that NEA has requested the World Bank to divert the Power Development Fund (PDF), meant for building the 30 MW Kabeli 'A' project, toward upgrading the Bharatpur-Hetauda transmission link to 220 kv.

"Construction of Kabeli 'A' will not start till 2009/10. So, we have asked the World Bank to allow us to use part of the fund to upgrade the transmission link," Shrestha said. "Their green signal is awaited."

Even if the bank agrees soon and work to upgrade the transmission link is immediately started, it would take about seven years to complete the upgrading considering the almost insurmountable difficulties faced these days by infrastructure development initiatives in acquiring local people's land and agreeing to and providing reasonable compensation, said Bhat.

Upgrading the Bharatpur Hetauda link to 220 kv will cost around Rs 2 billion, while upgrading the transmission infrastructure of the whole country to ease power flow for the next 10 years will cost around US $ 250 million, Bhat said.