With the dry season affecting domestic power production, the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has started importing up to 350 MW of electricity daily from India. The government-owned power utility has said that the current average daily electricity production is between 900-1000 MWs. As production capacity drops to 40 percent during the dry season, NEA has to manage the electricity supply by importing from India. With a fall in temperature, the domestic demand for electricity hit as high as 30,125 MWh on Tuesday. NEA, however, supplied only 29,141 MWh of electricity, including domestically produced power and energy imported from India.

Although Nepal has started exporting surplus electricity to India during the wet season, it has to import electricity in the dry season when demand rises while supply slumps. It is because almost all of the power production in the country is based on run-of-the-river hydropower plants. The dry season runs from December to April while the wet season lasts from May to November. According to NEA, the run-of-the-river type hydropower projects usually produce less than 40 percent of their installed capacity during the dry season.

The government-owned power utility sold electricity worth Rs 11.16bn to India beginning in June last year until it stopped the exports in the third week of December last year owing to a decline in production during the dry season. India has allowed Nepal to sell 452.6MW of power generated by eight hydropower projects in India’s energy market. During the wet season in 2022, Nepal suffered spillage of power as domestic consumption slumped while there was approval for exporting power from India. According to NEA, over 700MW is expected to be added to the national grid in the current fiscal 2022/23 while over 550MW is expected to be added in the next fiscal year 2023/24. With more electricity that will be generated by various power projects across the country coming to the national grid in the current and next fiscal years, there is an urgent need to initiate the construction of more cross-border transmission lines between Nepal and India. According to Energy Ministry officials, Nepal and India will hold discussions on developing new cross-border transmission lines as the two countries have moved in the direction of creating a common electricity market in South Asia. The topic will be discussed in the upcoming meetings of the joint secretary-level Joint Working Group and secretary-level Joint Steering Committee to be held in India. NEA has proposed to develop a 400KV transmission line connecting Inaruwa of Nepal and Purnia of Bihar, India. Similarly, the 400kV New Lamki (Dodohara)-Bareli Cross Border Transmission Line has also been planned with the NEA preparing a comprehensive design of this project.