Hitendradev Shakya, Managing Director of Nepal Electricity Authority, has said that they want to ensure the construction of transmission lines in the upcoming Power Purchase Agreement (PPA). He said that the current problem is transmission line rather than power generation, so the authority will seek to ensure it.

In a meeting with journalists on Saturday, Shakya said that it would be easy if the private sector came to the agenda of transmission line expansion. In order to ensure investment in this area, the authority should emphasize on the expansion of transmission lines. There is a problem in the extension of transmission lines within Nepal. We are of the opinion that there should be a guarantee that the transmission line will be built,” he said. “If production, consumption and sales are guaranteed, no one would have objected if the word ‘take or pay’ had been put there. He said that

is no longer another option for broadcast lines. After production, electricity must find a market. There is no market (consumption). There is no arrangement for storage, but if only electricity generation is to be done, that is a problem. A transmission line is necessary for the balance of all of them,” he said, “including transmission lines within Nepal and cross-border transmission lines. There is no problem with the cross-border transmission line. We are now understanding that it is only a cross-border line rather than a transmission line.

Although a strong transmission line is needed to reach the cross-border line, the authority is facing forest, people and money problems for that, he said. Even though we have two to three hundred megawatts of electricity till today, we are not able to export it to India. Because the neck is small in Bharatpur-Damauli and in Kabeli,’ he said, ‘because there is no road, we have not been able to send . The transmission line network is also weak.

He said that now we should proceed by collaborating with the private sector to solve this problem.

Source: Kantipur