Load-shedding increases by 2 hrs a day
By Bikash Sangraula
eKantipur.com, KATHMANDU, March 10 - With the current load-shedding of 35 hours per week per household not saving much energy, load-shedding hours will soon be further extended by one to two hours per day per household, officials at Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) said.
"The current rate of load-shedding is not helping much," said NEA spokesperson Birendra Kumar Pathak. "The Kulekhani projects continue to be under stress as load has switched to the hours when we supply power."
The load-shift has occurred with consumers using all sorts of electrical appliances during hours when there is power. Due to this, NEA is saving only the power that would otherwise have been used during the outage to light houses.
NEA hoped to keep the Kulekhani projects functioning till the next wet season by slowing down the decrease in water level in their reservoir from 70 centimeters a day to 25 centimeters a day.
A source at NEA's Load Dispatching Centre said that water level in the reservoir continues to go down by 40 centimetres a day.
"At this rate, Kulekhani reservoir will be empty in two weeks, taking away 700,000 units of electricity per day from the system," the source said.
NEA had doubled load-shedding hours to make up for a power deficit of 1.3 million units a day, which means the power that would be lost due to closure of Kulekhani projects, will require extension of load-shedding by one to two hours a day per household, the source added.
The Kulekhani projects are the only reliable source of power in the country in dry season when the run-of-river projects in the country cannot produce to capacity owing to low level of water in the rivers.
Ideally, the two projects are closed during wet season so that the reservoir is replenished for use in the dry season.
This year, the projects had to generate power even in the wet season owing to breakdown in a turbine at Kaligandaki 'A' project. That left the reservoir 12 meters below ideal level even in the wet season.
Generation from run-of-river projects in the country is down by 50 to 70 percent.
