KATHMANDU, March 14: Leakage and technical loss of electricity in Province 1 has decreased by 3.91 percentage points to 13.74 percent in the first seven months of FY2017/18, according to Nepal Electricity Authority.
The progress is above the national annual target of reducing such leakage by 2.9 percentage points to 20 percent. Similarly, it is higher than the target of 3.65 percentage points for the province for FY2017/18.
Of the 17 distribution centers of NEA in Province 1, Inaruwa managed to reduce leakage by the highest 10.07 percentage points to 26.52 points. Rangeli (32.30 percent) has the highest leakage rate of all distribution centers in Province 1.
Electricity leakage has come down to 7.49 percent
According to NEA’s office in Province 1, the distribution centers in the province supplied 551 million units of electricity in the seven-month period, but collected revenue from only 475.3 million units. This means altogether 5.7 million units of energy was lost during transmission due to theft and other technical loss.
NEA has attributed the remarkable process to leakage control campaign, strengthening of supply system and transformers, and signing of performance agreement with chief of its provincial office.
NEA Chief Kulman Ghising waged a campaign against electricity leakage by signing performance contract with chief of its Distribution and Consumer Services Department Sachidananda Mishra.
“This achievement could be possible due to our campaign against theft, strengthening of supply system and transformers, and signing of performance agreement with the chief of our provincial office,” a press statement issued by NEA said on Tuesday, quoting Ghising. Ghising started signing performance contract with chief of NEA’s regional or provincial offices from August as part of his campaign to manage smooth supply of electricity. He has already to lower leakage to 15 percent in the next three years.
“Campaign against electricity theft and our efforts to collect long-standing revenue from consumers has helped us to non-technical losses significantly. Similarly, change and maintenance of transformers has also helped us to control electricity leakage,” added Ghising.
The energy utility has also said that newly-formed local units have also helped the NEA to bring down electricity theft. In line with the NEA’s leakage control campaign, Kankai Municipality of Jhapa has already announced to make its area free of electricity theft.
