By Pradeep K. Tamrakar

We are being informed that load shedding in Nepal will continue for the next five years. This official statement is proof enough to conclude that the “10000 megawatts in 10 years” slogan is much air and nothing more. As we all know, when people’s expectations are high, such hoaxes come in very handy. This goes on to prove that Nepal has no solid plan to address the all-encompassing problem of power supply. Nepalese may be doomed to cope with 48/70 hours of load-shedding for god knows how many years, if not for ever (the scenario being - demand out-running supply for ever, which is not an impossible situation).

Solution
So what are we going to do? Go for inverters and generators as everybody seems to be doing these days? But at the rate we are going, there would not be enough power even to recharge the batteries or the time to recharge them even if the people can afford to buy the equipment.

“Equip households with solar panels” was the easy answer to this poser, and the answer came from a high official of the Ministry of Science and Technology. Obviously, the ministry people are in eighth heaven. They seem to be oblivious to the high costs of the system. So I asked this friend of mine from the ministry, if something better could be done? He suggested we wait five or 10 years to let the power supply situation improve.

“How about thermal power?” I asked. “But we don’t have coal or oil” he said Tortured by the long dark hours, I put the same question to a professor friend of mine. He said “If the government is serious, there is a solution. It is a technical problem, and the solution must not be a political one.

And here is how it is solved: “Eighty per cent of the world’s power supply comes from turbine coupled dynamos, such machines being the most efficient ones. The turbine itself is driven by steam produced in nuclear reactors or by burning fuel in the form of coal, petroleum, wood, agro-waste or any other thing that burns for that matter. The key components in this configuration are the burners or the nuclear reactors that produce heat to make steam, the boilers which produce steam and turbine-dynamo assembly, which is rotated by the steam, thus producing electricity.

“Now, the interesting and advantageous situation is that,” he went on “everything except the turbine-dynamo assembly already exists in huge numbers along the Terai belt of our country. For instance, in a typical tea factory in eastern Nepal, a rice husk fired boiler consuming 2 tons of rice husks per hour produces 500 - 600 kilos of steam at 20 bar pressure. The lower heat value of 2 tons of rice husks will be about 400 to 500 kg of liquid fuel. This should be able to produce 2 - 3 megawatts of power quite easily.”

The cost of power produced by this technique will be far less than even hydro-power, since the price of husk is only Rs.1 - 2 per kilo. Also, we may be able to earn a few carbon dollars in the bargain by using this technology. It is possible to generate 100, even 500 megawatts with this technology immediately since there are hundreds of such installations in the eastern Terai alone, not to speak about the mid- and western parts of the region.

“But how about the transmission of power? The government is saying that this is also a problem” I asked.
“That is not a problem at all,” he said. “The annual power bill of this tea factory I am talking about is Rs. 5 million. If the factory installs the turbine generator, it will be able to power itself completely and sell any surplus to the power grid which is already there. I see red-tape as the only problem here. For example, licensing and power purchase conditions… Also ready help with finance for the entrepreneurs may be essential, since investment will be needed for retro-fitting of the existing boilers and installation of turbine-dynamo assembly, which are readily available in the market.

“The whole process of order, design, delivery, installation and commissioning can be done within three/four months in contrast to three/four years needed for any hydro-power project. Helping with investment should not be a moral dilemma for the government since even the most advanced and rich countries are bailing out their sick industries for the sake of the countries’ overall economy these days.”

I pondered over what my friend said and thought, “Yes, this is the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.”
Is it really possible? Will the people buy the idea? Can Nepal venture into these hitherto unknown waters - 100-500 megawatts of power in 100 days, when it has taken 50/60 years to reach the present-day 500/600 megawatt capacity?

But that is far, far less than the “10,000 megawatts in 10 years” slogan of the present-day government.
Exactly, how much is this100 megawatts we have been talking about anyway?

In comparison, this amount is a minuscule 4 per cent of power being consumed by one Indian state of Tamil Nadu, whose power deficit is said to be 3,000 megawatts or five times our power supply.

No more load-shedding
But for Nepal, this 100/200 megawatt, that we are talking about will reduce the crushing 70 hours load-shedding to zero hours (since a 500 megawatt power supply will be sufficient for a five week-day, an additional 200 megawatts should be adequate for 2 days a week load-shedding).

It is a question of life and death.
Yes or No?

(Tamrakar is a professor at the Mechanical Engineering Department, Institute of Engineering, Thapathali Campus and can be reached at tamrakar.pradeep@yahoo.com)