KATHMANDU, Jan 20: Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has reduced the power leakage during distribution to 7.49 percent in the first five months of the current financial year (FY) 2079/80 BS. As a result of regular campaigns conducted for electricity supply and technical and non-technical leakage control, the authority has reduced the accumulated leakage during distribution by 1.74 percent this year compared to last year's December. Last year till December, electricity leakage during distribution was 9.23 percent. In the last financial year 2078/79 BS, the overall electricity leakage during distribution was 10.86 percent.
By December of the current year, 4.147 billion units of electricity have been received in the distribution system, 3.836 billion units of electricity have been sold, while 31.779 million units of electricity leaked.
The leakage from transmission lines is 4.56 percent till December. The electricity leakage of the overall system is 12.05 percent till November in terms of transmission and distribution. As of last June, the electricity leakage of the entire system was 15.38 percent
Electricity leakage falls to 14.35 percent in four months
The largest part of the power leakage in the system is on the distribution side. The Authority has set a target of reducing the electricity leakage of the overall system to 14 percent and the distribution leakage to 8.5 percent in the current year.
Kulman Ghising, managing director of the Authority, said that it was a great achievement to have succeeded in reducing the distribution leakage to 7.49 percent, which was about 22 percent about seven years ago. Managing Director Ghising said that the entire team has been mobilized to make the technical and non-technical leakage control measures more effective and reduce the leakage even further than the target.
"During this period, new substations have been constructed, the existing substations have been upgraded, electricity consumption has increased in the industrial sector, meter reading has been made effective, and the leakages have decreased due to the accumulated unit billing of customers," Ghising said. Overloaded substations, strengthening of feeder lines and construction of new substations, replacement of conductors, transformers etc are the results of a huge investment.
Mentioning that technical leakage may increase in hill areas in winter and terai areas in summer, Ghising said that taking this into account, work is being done to reduce the leakage below the desired limit.
The results of measures such as increasing the capacity of substations, adding conductors, changing overloaded transformers, encouraging the use of three-phase meters etc have been seen in leakage control. In order to control non-technical leakages, theft control, enforcement of tax arrears collection, meter bypassing and hooking and taking strict action against those who steal, replacing closed meters, encouraging them to take meters, identification and reading of customers without meter reading (stock units) have been carried out as a campaign.
Most electricity leakage in Madhesh
Out of the distribution centers under the Authority's seven regional offices and two provincial division offices, Madhesh Province Regional Office, Janakpur has the most electricity leakage. The total electricity leakage of 23 distribution centers under Janakpur Regional Office is 12.80 percent till December. It was 12.97 percent during the same period last year. Sarlahi's NEA Malangwa Distribution Center has the highest power leakage of 44.83 percent. Last year, NEA Malangwa Distribution Center's electricity leakage was 43.82 percent.
