Pointing at the receding water current in rivers due to dry winter season, the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has announced three-hours-a-day load shedding across the country beginning Friday.

As per the new schedule announced by the NEA’s Load Dispatch Centre, each household in the capital valley will have to suffer from three hours of power cut everyday.

Load Shedding woes: A business operating with a candle due to load shedding, Friday afternoon, Jan 26 07. The NEA announced 3 hours of load shedding per day from today. nepalnews.com/ANA

Load Shedding woes: A business operating with a candle due to load shedding…
There will be 21 hours of power cut every week – twice during 5:30 am till 8:30 am; once during 9 am till 12 noon; once during 12 noon till 3 pm ; twice during 5 pm till 8 pm and once during 10 pm till 1 am. Outside valley, the timings are different but the load shedding will be imposed for similar number of hours.

According to NEA managing director Arjun Karki, the load shedding hours will be further increased after two weeks – up to 40 hours a week.

Most of the hydropower projects in the country are of the run-of-the-river type, whose capacity decreases substantially during the dry months when the water discharge in the rivers decline. There are only two storage type projects – Kulekhani I (60 MW) and II (32) MW – and both of them are run in full capacity during dry season in order to meet the demands.

The NEA has said that load shedding could not be averted despite moves to procure power from India. Karki has informed that the country will have to bear crippling power cuts till at least 2012 – after when, he adds, the new projects will start pumping more power into the national grid erasing the need to impose load shedding.