NEA Executive Director Kulman Ghising said that the state-owned power utility will start exporting electricity from the third week of May. "As the pre-monsoon season is approaching, the flow of water in the rivers will increase," said Ghising, "We have started making our internal preparations accordingly."
According to NEA, there have been rains across the country in the last two weeks and electricity generation has also increased. The authority claims that electricity generation will further increase after the pre-monsoon begins. Although Nepal has started exporting surplus electricity to India during the wet season, it has to import electricity in the dry season to meet the power demand. 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 as water levels in the rivers decrease significantly during the dry season. During the wet season, when there is more water in the river, the electricity generation is also higher. At that time, the production is more than the demand in Nepal. The excess electricity is exported to India. Now, the NEA plans to export 1,200 MW this year to India. The NEA has been selling electricity in the day-ahead market of Indian Energy Exchange Limited (IX) through daily bidding. Currently, the southern neighbor has allowed Nepal to sell 452.6 MW of electricity generated by 10 hydropower projects in the Indian power market. But the approvals given to the 10 hydropower projects need to be renewed every year. NEA has forwarded the list of additional projects including the 452 MW Upper Tamakoshi Project, the electricity of which it plans to sell to India. If the southern neighbor accepts the new list, the state-owned power utility can be able to export power according to its target. As per NEA's estimation, the country's installed capacity will reach 2,800 MW by this wet season. With peak electricity demand in Nepal around 1,750 MW, the NEA believes it can export up to 1,200 MW during the wet season. Nepal earned over Rs 11 billion by supplying excess power to India from early June to mid-December, 2022. Nepal first started exporting power to India in early November 2021 through a competitive bidding process. But after exporting for a few weeks, Nepal stopped selling power to India in December amid a reduction in power generation in the dry season. Exports resumed in 2022 with the start of the monsoon in early June. The NEA sold 1.35 billion units of electricity to India since then and earned Rs 11.16 billion. The power was sold at a rate between Rs 6.58 and Rs 12.15 a unit. NEA earned Rs 2.83 billion from exports from July to the end of the last fiscal year 2021/22 and an additional Rs 8.32 billion since the start of the new fiscal year 2022/23. The authority has set a target of Rs 16 billion within the current fiscal after resuming exports in May.
