KATHMANDU, August 25: Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have jointly inaugurated two cross-border transmission lines.
The prime minister of the two neighboring countries jointly remote-launched Kusaha-Kataiya and Parwanipur-Raxaul cross-border transmission lines amid an event organized at Hyderabad House, New Delhi, on Thursday.
Both the transmission lines are of 132KV capacity
The transmission lines were inaugurated during Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's five-day state visit to India which began on Wednesday.
These new transmission lines will enable Nepal to get more electricity from India. The transmission lines have been inaugurated at a time when there were concerns that the country could face load-shedding in the coming winter season.
So far, Nepal has been importing 130 MW electricity from the 11KV Kusaha-Kataiyaha transmission line, while the 33KV Parwanipur-Raxaul line was supplying only 10 MW to Nepal.
According to officials of the Nepal Electricity Authority, Nepal will now be able to import an additional 50 MW from each transmission line. This means the country will be able to import an additional 100 MW from India from these two transmission lines. Construction of these transmission lines completed in January.
India built these two projects as part of its grant assistance to Nepal. It has already expressed willingness to Nepali engineers on operational issues.
The higher capacity transmission line will also reduce the cost of electricity imported from India, according to officials of the NEA. Earlier in the first week of August, a meeting of the Power Exchange Committee (PEC) held in New Delhi had fixed price of electricity imported from 132 KV transmission line at IRs 5.55 per unit, down from IRs 6 per unit imported from 33KV transmission line and IRs 6.45 from 11KV transmission line.
The land acquisition cost of these two transmission lines was borne by Nepal, while other construction cost was supported by India.
The availability of higher capacity transmission lines means Nepal's electricity imports from India will increase further in the coming days. Nepal imported up to 385 MW of electricity from India in Fiscal Year 2016/17. Such import is likely to reach up to 500 MW in this fiscal year.
Nepal imported electricity worth Rs 14.2 billion from India in the last fiscal year.
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