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Imported electricity being under-utilised
The country has not been able to make optimum use of 90 MW electricity imported from Kataiya Power station, India, meant for the areas east of the Koshi River.If the entire imported electricity is consumed, load-shedding can be reduced by at least four hours a day in the region, which is facing power cuts of 12 hours a day for industries and 10 hours for households.
A “logbook” of the imported electricity shows the utilisation has been not up to the mark. It shows the imported energy was completely consumed for only one day between April 14 and May 30.
“The major problem is we cannot store the energy. If only 65MW is consumed on a given day, we can do nothing about it,” said Prakash Narayan Singh, head of the grid centre.
However, sources blame the lack of coordination between the grid centre and load dispatch centres in Duhai, Sunsari, for the situation.
The grid centre used to prepare load-shedding timetable earlier, but it is now prepared by the load dispatch centre. When the grid centre was managing the load-shedding table, the consumption of the imported electricity was up to mark.
The grid centre used to inform industries about power outages over the phone, but it has stopped to do so now.
“If the load-shedding schedule is prepared by identifying areas with high demand and those with relatively lower demand, the 90MW electricity could have been fully utilised,” said Rakesh Surana, coordinator of the energy sector at Morang Industries Association.
“The load pattern should be reworked to make full utilisation of energy imported from India,” said Surana.