The Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has decided to increase the load shedding from the present 12 hours to 29 hours per week, which will be effective from November 17.
The new schedule published by NEA today mentioned that maintenance work on Middle Marsyangdi (70 MW) hydro project is the reason for the increment. “The maintenance work of the turbines will start from Wednesday for which experts from Germany are already in town and have asked for at least three weeks for the work to complete so we are obliged to increase the load shedding hours,” said Chijranjivi Paudel, Chief, Load Dispatch Center, NEA.
There are two turbines each of capacity 35 MW in Middle Marsyangdi and generate 70 MW when operated at full capacity. The load shedding hours are likely to increase more than that in coming days as NEA had already predicted up to 16 hours load shedding for this winter. “We are not sure whether load shedding will decrease after three weeks or not because the flow of water is decreasing as the winter has already started. So, it depends upon the production of electricity across the nation by the time maintenance will be completed,” added Paudel.
The present demand of electricity in the nation is 886 MW and the supply is 605MW. After the closure of Middle Marsyangdi the total supply will be only 535 MW.(Source:THT)
