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NEA cuts outage by an hour a day
Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) on Sunday slashed loadshedding by an hour a day, effective from Monday.Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) on Sunday slashed loadshedding by an hour a day, effective from Monday.
After the latest revision, the power outage hours will decrease to 84 hours a week from 91 hours. Household consumers have to face 12-hour outage a day.
NEA Managing Director Mukesh Kafle said the latest revision followed the import of 80MW electricity from India through the newly-built Dhalkebar-Muzaffarpur cross-border transmission line.
“Although the import has been taking place since February 20, we had been studying the transmission’s stability until now. So it took us this long to come up
with the new loadshedding schedule,” he said. “Also, we are using the Kulekhani reserve in a controlled way, generating power for about 12 to 13 hours a day.”
NEA also said the loadshedding hours will keep on decreasing now onwards. “We will again review the loadshedding hours after 10 days,” Kafle said.
Including the 80MW imported electricity, total power currently available in the system stands at about 580MW, while the demand amounts to around 1,25 MW during peak hours.
The power crisis worsened this year a few hydropower projects, with a combined capacity of 70MW, were damaged by the April 25 earthquake, according
to NEA. Bhote Koshi (45MW), Sipring (10MW) and other smaller projects went dead after the earthquake.