The protracted progress of West Seti Hydroelectric Project in absence of financial arrangement is again taking a move ahead.

One of the senior project officials informed to start 10 km long access road, connecting project’s site and Seti Highway, to encourage the investors. “To trim down the project’s uncertainty existing among locals, government and investors, we are constructing access road with investment from SMEC,” the official told the Rajdhani.

According to an official at the Ministry of Energy, the promoter, which failed to kick-start the construction works even after a decade of acquiring the project’s license, is going to construct access road in the project’s site when the government started looking for a new investor.

The Energy Minister, Prakash Sharan Mahat informed that the project could not go ahead since the company failed to make financial closing. “The government is not going to delay the project if the construction company approaches us with an official letter regarding financial closure,” he said.

The Minister Mahat admitted the continuity of the same company in the project, although he hinted some preliminary discussions regarding the new investor. “We are analysing some clauses for amendment in the agreement with the existing company,” he said. 

Mahat also informed that the agreement was forwarded to officials at Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Law for giving a second look at some clauses.

Nepal bears a great loss since the construction company failed to make financial arrangement, said Mahat, “The government is committed to begin West Seti soon.”

The project with 750 MW installed capacity exports 90 percent of electricity to India while remaining 10 percent will be granted to Nepal free of cost.

As per the past agreement, 1.6 billion US dollars project engrosses share investment from Australian Construction Company SMEC (26 %), Government of Nepal (15%), Asian Development Bank (15%), China Machinery Imports and Exports Corporation CMEC (15%), Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services –IL&FS (15%) and the Nepalese financial institutions (14 %) including four percent from the far western local people. The project will have 25 percent equity share and 75 percent as loan investment.

“Investments from others will flow as soon as ADB gets ready,” said the source accusing ADB for its negligence for delayed investment.

Unofficial translation from Rajdhani daily Kathmandu, Nov 17, 2009

KATHMANDU: It takes 73 days to fulfil six procedures to get an electricity connection in Nepal, according to a World Bank pilot project. The same can be done in 22 days and four procedures in Iceland but takes 424 days in Afghanistan.

Getting Electricity — the two-and-a-half-year project — presents findings on the constraints entrepreneurs around the world face in getting access to electricity and illustrates patterns in connection processes. The study also tracks all the procedures, the time, and the cost required to obtain an electricity connection for a newly constructed building.

However, in Nepal the cost of not having electricity is higher than the cost of connection, as the country reels under long hours of power outage. World Bank surveys in 89 economies of the world show that electricity tops infrastructure needs of the business entities.

Many businesses lack access to power connections and are prevented from moving into higher-value-added activities that rely on electricity-based technologies. According to International Energy Agency, in 2005 more than a quarter of the world’s population lacked access to electricity. Businesses also care about the cost of both the electricity connection and the electricity supply-because electricity-related expenditure eats up a significant share of their revenue.

Managers responding to World Bank Enterprise Surveys estimated that on average their spending on electricity amounts to four per cent of their annual sales, while combined spending on other infrastructure services like fuel, communication services and water accounts for 6.4 per cent.

Among the 140 economies surveyed for Getting Electricity, Ukraine ranks at the bottom, with 10 procedures required to get new power connection. It’s much easier to do the same in Denmark, Germany, Japan and Mauritius.

The survey details the efficiency and cost of the services provided to commercial customers by distribution utilities, the complexity of procedures, and the resources expended by businesses in obtaining a connection.

“In the 10 economies with fewest procedures, the process of obtaining an electricity connection takes only 56 days on an average, while in 10 economies with most procedures, it takes 215 days,” the report adds.

The Himalayan Times

BIRGUNJ: Minister for Energy Prakash Sharan Mahat said today that the country would face power-cuts for at least three more years.

Speaking at a press conference organised by Nepal Press Union Parsa, he said, “The dark hours will stay here as high capacity transmission line for electricity from India to Nepal won’t be in place before three years.”

According to him, the public was reeling under regular power-cuts as the internal production was not sufficient to meet the energy demands. The minister, however, informed that plans were afoot to repair the thermal plants in Hetauda and Biratnagar. “That could be some sort of a breather for the country,” he said.

He also made revelations that the government had a policy to encourage investors in hydro projects. “The government has prioritised the Upper-Seti Hydro Electricity Project in Tanahun while preparations were on for the construction of Upper-Tamakoshi as well,” he said. The minister also informed that more than a billion rupees has been allocated for rural electrification in this fiscal budget.

He, however, said that the budget deficit of the Nepal Electricity Authority had reached Rs 14 billion. Saying that the electricity in the country was being sold at a price lower than the production cost, Mahat hinted at a possible hike in the electricity tariff.

The Himalayan Times

Pashupatinagar, Oct 22 :Electricity in the remote Yaktapa village has been generated with the use of improved water spin, popularly known as pani ghatta. It is the first time in the whole eastern region that pani-ghatta has been used to generate water-mill power.

The active involvement of the residents of Yaktapa and Phakaphok has been able to produced 5 megawatt electricity with the help of improved water-spin from the river of Phakaphok situated at the middle of Yaktapa and Phakaphok VDC.

The remote VDC has situated 60 kilometers away from the district headquarter. After the production of electricity, a total of 47 families have benefited from it.

The water-spin started producing energy, the locals of the Yaktapa and Phakaphok people have got the facilities of grinding their paddy and maize products.

The electricity generation project was completed under the assistance of help of Center of Alternate Energy (CRD). The CRD has helped Rs 27000 and the invested another Rs. 2,33,000 for the construction of the project.

A local, Ash Bahadur Limbu, had donated Rs. 1,50,000 for the construction of water spin, said Dil Bahadur Limbu president of consumers and electricity and improved water spin construction committee.

The capacity of project will be increased to 7 megawatt of power generation after some time, said Krishna Khanal, Eastern Region Supplier of the CRD.

According to the Limbu, after increasing the capacity of the project, about 90 families will be benefitted by electricity.

The Rising Nepal

436 tons of waste is generated everyday in Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur. This can generate about 184 MW electricity everyday. Definitely the conversion technology with cleaning mechanism is costly but the cost needs to be looked at the waste management perspective and also the cost of electricity generation. New heat intense processing industrial area can be developed near by such location. This, to some extent, will also lead our metro cities towards a sustainable development.

Nepal is going through severe power shortage at present. This is having a huge cumulative effect on the economic growth of the country itself.The government of Nepal has declared state of emergency in the power sector and has admitted the bitter truth of being unsuccessful to meet the growing power demand. The present alarming situation is not a result of our actions and plans of last few months but it is an accumulation of problems, short-sightedness, political intervention in Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) and “water politics” in the past. As a result, we have always lacked in terms of long-term plan to cope with the increasing demand of electricity. We have lagged even behind other underdeveloped countries in the supply side option. Moreover, it is not possible to produce the deficit power in the coming few months.

It is so surprising as well as embarrassing to hear the experts who were in responsible positions in the past and now opposing the policy of past and present government. But we should realise this nightmare is not only because of the politicians. The experts and planners who were advisors and guiding the politicians should also take moral responsibility.

The peak energy demand in 1998 was 317 MW which was more than double (722 MW) in 2008. However, the current production capacity is 617 MW including NEA and Independent Power Producers efforts. So even in wet season, it is not possible to meet the demand even when the power plants operate in full capacity. Government should now come up with a detail programme to sort out the problem. Definitely the power crisis need to be seen in a larger perspective, requiring short term, mid term and long term solutions.

Short Terms Measures
The energy issue is related with demand side. The residential sector has large contribution (42%) during the peak hours. So, strong demand management programmes in residential sector can sharply reduce the peak load. Replacement of incandescent light by Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL) in a mass scale in the household, and promotion of energy efficient home appliances could be effective measures to reduce demands.

The life of CFL are normally longer than that of filament lamps while its use also substantially reduces the electricity bill but they are susceptible with the voltage and frequency variation and therefore question of maintaining standard voltage and frequency in the consumer end is another big challenge to NEA. As the cost of average CFL is ten times higher than incandescent lamps consumers may be reluctant to quickly shift to these lamps if we are not able to assure the quality of the electricity. So maintaining quality of electricity is must to enforce successful CFL programme.

Electricity is a commodity; the pricing needs to vary with the demand. So, there should also be time of day tariff in urban residential sector. This will encourage people to shift their possible load in off peak hours. If above mentioned two points are implemented properly, the peak load could be reduced by at least 10% to 20%. For this, there should be an integrated effort from NEA, consumer associations and the private sector.

Mid Term Measures: Diesel plants or Energy from Waste
The government had come up with the proposal of installing 200 MWh diesel power plants for immediate solution to the load shedding, which could be a mid term solution. The question is if we have done the feasibility study to identify such locations which could prove best for locating diesel plant considering the transmission losses, local environment etc. There is also doubt on the reliable supply from diesel plants as people have bitter experience of keeping themselves in queue for hours to get few liters of petrol and diesel in the gasoline stations. The installation cost of a diesel power plant is fairly low and also has shorter installation time than hydro but it will be another challenge to compete with its high generation cost and to cope with price dependency on imported fuel. NEA has proposed additional government subsidy to meet the extra per unit cost of generation which is not a realistic plan and solution at all. More in depth exercise is needed before its implementation.

Waste management has always been a big problem in major cities especially the capital Kathmandu. An integrated solution for two different problems could be generate energy from waste. A typical plant with a daily waste input of 830 tons of garbage and 50 MWh of energy generates 400 MWh electricity and 960 tons of steam (thermal power) and 28 tons of ash, which is hardly 3% of the total weight of the garbage which would otherwise has to be dumped in the dumping site.

436 tons of waste is generated everyday in Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur. This can generate about 184 MW electricity everyday. Definitely the conversion technology with cleaning mechanism is costly but the cost needs to be looked at the waste management perspective and also the cost of electricity generation. New heat intense processing industrial area can be developed near by such location. This, to some extent, will also lead our metro cities towards a sustainable development.

Long-term Strategy
Without doubt, our long term strategy needs to focus on hydropower. If we look at the NEA’s annual report, 12.8 Gigawatts has been in plan and proposed power development schemes including ambitious schemes like Pancheswor of 6.5 GW, Karnali Chisapani of 1.1 GW, since quite a long time. Time has come to critically review our power development policy and strategy and the reasons why we have not been successful in hydropower development. Every large hydropower scheme plan has been politicised. We should now be able to move ahead with national consensus in hydropower development.

We should also be able to foresee power surplus situation once large schemes are harnessed. Our strategies in no case depend on India as a single client. So we should advocate for SAARC regional pool concept. We must create an environment to sell our electricity in a free market pool. So that we wont have the “power excess” problem in future.

(Mainali is a researcher at Energy and Climate Studies Division in Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Email: brijesh.mainali@energy.kth.se )

Source : NEPALNEWS.COM