NEA doubles load shedding hours; No prospect of immediate end of it: NEA officials

March 5, 2006
3 MIN READ
A
A+
A-

The state-owned Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has doubled the load-shedding hours in the country from the current 17 hours to 35 hours per week per household, effective from Saturday citing high power demand and low generation by power plants.

Under the new arrangement, each household will face load-shedding twice every day, for a total of five hours.

Talking to Nepalnews, spokesperson at the NEA Birendra Pathak said that fast depleting water levels at the storage type Kulekhani-I and Kulekhani-II projects, extremely low output from run-of-river projects, and an abrupt rise in power demand in the Terai region due to fast rising mercury were instrumental in forcing NEA to take this measure.

NEA’s projected power demand for this month was 7.8 million units per day. The actual demand is 8.2 million units. There is a shortage of 1.3 million units per day, he added.

He informed that NEA will review the load shedding hours after analyzing the water level in rivers.

He further informed that there was no hope of addressing the problem immediately as there were no additional power projects in the pipeline except the 70 megawatt Middle Marsyangdi project, expected to be operational by the end of 2007 if everything goes well.

In the second week of January this year, during a meeting between Nepalese officials and officials of the Power Trade Corporation of India held in New Delhi, India had agreed to provide 50 megawatt of electricity to Nepal but Nepal is yet to benefit from the agreement as both the sides are yet to finalize the tariff rate, according to officials.

This is the first time the country will be facing extended load-shedding since the 144 megawatt Kali Gandaki ‘A’ became fully operational in 2002.

The long hour of load shedding is affecting every sector of the country. The industrial sector of the country is facing very hard days due to the long hour of load shedding.

Industrialist Rajendra Kumar Khetan said that the provision of load shedding will increase production cost by 1 to 5 percent, which will reduce competitive strength of Nepalese goods.

“We cannot compete in the regional and global level at a time when we became a part of the regional and global trading arrangements, due to the high production cost and expensive raw material,” he added.

Niranjan Subedi, a Bachelor level student at the Tri-Chandra Multiple Campus, who is preparing for the final year exam slated for next month, said he was facing difficulties in his studies due to the long hours of load shedding.

“Mostly I am affected from the evening load shedding, it has direct negative impact in my study.”

He did not let the chance go to express his dissatisfaction with the government and said, “The government is not serious about the problem of common people and is only devoted to prolong its tenure in the office.”

One of the operators of cyber café at Buddhanagar said her business had gone down drastically in the recent days due to irregular supply of electricity.