Officially a load-shedding schedule of 96 hours a week (which averages out at 14 hours a day) is in place. Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) enforced the schedule from January 23. But for weeks before the latest rains came, NEA cut power for more hours than notified.
People will have to wait for about three more weeks for a stable power-cut schedule.
"We have been supplying power for more hours in recent days than notified in the schedule but we cannot make changes in the schedule simply on the basis of the current temporary rainfall," NEA System Operation Director Sher Singh Bhat told myrepublica.com.
According to him, people will have to wait until the last week of April when snow in the mountains starts to melt. All the hydropower projects in the country -- except Kulekhani-- are run-of-river model.
The projects including the 144-MW Kaligandaki-A, the largest in operation, will start generating more power once the water level rises in the snow-fed rivers.
Snow melt in the mountains is traditionally a reliable basis for NEA to reschedule its load-shedding.
200 MW from India
India´s Power Trading Corporation (PTC) recently proposed to sell 200 MW of electricity to Nepal.
But according to Bhat, this offer can only be a long term solution and cannot address the current power shortage.
"It´s a time-consuming task as a cross-border transmission line is not available to import power at present," he said. He added that a few transmission lines currently available along the border have very low capacity. These lines will be occupied evacuating power from domestic projects to the national grid once the water levels rise in the rivers.
Therefore, importing power from India in large volume needs high capacity transmission lines. "For that, we have to complete the Khimti-Dhalkebar transmission line. It will take at least two years to build the transmission line," he added.
Earlier, Nepal was expecting to import about 100 MW from India through the Duhabi-Kataiya transmission line alone after restoring transmission towers toppled by the Koshi. But only about 50 MW has come through as India is yet to complete restoration work on transmission lines on the Bihar side of the border.
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