Tuesday, October 5, 2010

4.ELECTRICITY CRISIS

Nepal is facing severe electricity crisis due to supply constraint and it has already been forecast that the load shedding is here to stay in the increasing magnitude. In the past, Nepal Electricity Authority(NEA) used to trot the excuse of no water in rivers whenever it came up with a new load shedding schedule or made changes in them resulting in the increased hours of load shedding. However, this rainy season, even in the abundance of water, NEA imposed a load shedding of  2 hours each day, two days a week even in August.
         In Nepal, Hydropower was historically been seen as the priority. It is still considered to have enormous potential, but after more than a century- from 1900 when the pharping power plant with 500 KW installed capacity was established development has been extraordinarily slow. At present hydropower still meets only two percent of the total energy need, and only some 40 percent of the total population has access to electricity. It is also the case that such hydropower plants as do exist has mainly catered to the electricity needs of the urban or semi-urban areas according to the authorized body of NEA

    After 1990, the government opened up the local sector to the local and foreign independent  power  producer’s  (IPPs), while the NEA also initiated some project with different financing modes. As a result, a 292 MW capacity was developed within 10 years. But current peak hour demand in the NEA system is over 560 MW and this is likely to increase in an average rate of seven percent every year, according to NEA.
       In the scarcity of electricity, because of the load shedding, many industries have been collapsed. Even many vehicles are unable to recharge their batteries. People don’t have efficient means of communication. Students suffer because they don’t have electricity at the important period of time. People are unable to run computer at their wish. These and many other effects are being experienced. Nepal gets back and no proper development can be expected now.
   It is necessary for the government, parties and people in authority to feel the electricity crisis closely and think of future in the country, instead of personal benefit. We must use the enormous potentiality of hydropower and develop the country.

No comments:

Post a Comment