Kathmandu, Apr.17:A six-day international course on small hydropower development kicked off here today.

Inaugurating the course, Ram Bahadur Gurung, State Minster for Water Resources, said that the development of hydropower results into increasing utilisation of local resources, rural electrification, among others.

“The government has given top priority to the hydropower development and for the private sector participation in this sector,” he said adding, “Small hydropower is good for isolated community.”

Since most of the small hydropower projects are located in remote areas and are also prone to sedimentation, said Gurung, they should be tactfully assessed.

Arun Kumar of Alternate Hydro Energy Centre under the University of Roorkee, India, said that the course was the result of the interaction of the university with the Water and Energy Commission Secretariat (WECS) and Alternative Energy Promotion Centre.

“This course with a moderate duration has several chapters like planning, designing, automation, among others,” he said. “During the course, we will visit small hydropower project sites. The case studies we have included in the course are from Nepal, India, and the United Kingdom.”

Said Binayak Bhadra of International Centre of Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), “Micro hydropower projects can mitigate the global warming and threat to climate change.”

According to P.K. Pandey of University of Roorkee, Nepal was selected as the venue for the international course for two reasons: First, due to Nepal’s potentiality to establish itself for remote hydropower development. Secondly, due to close association of Nepalese scholars with Roorkee university.

Above 40 trainees from Nepal, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh will undertake the six-day training – tagged with Rupees 5,000 for each participant from the seven countries in the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation including Nepal.

Small hydropower developers have already begun to either produce power or construct hydel projects in Nepal. Not to talk about the increasing number of micro power developers across the Kingdom, growing number of small hydropower developers are signing the power purchase agreement with Nepal Electricity Authority.

The government’s policy requires the NEA to buy 50 MW of power from small power developers by 2003.