Hydroelectricity is one of the important sources of renewable energy and also preferred for its green and clean characteristics. For Nepal, hydroelectricity is an important green source of energy from which, the country can be self-reliant on energy and can also earn foreign currencies by exporting it. Recently, the country has been able to produce hydroelectricity exceeding its domestic demand. According to Nepal Electricity Authority, the installed capacity of hydropower projects in the country at present is around 2,000 MW whereas the domestic demand of hydroelectricity during peak is around 1,500 MW. Meantime, NEA has started to export electricity to India. So far, 216 hydropower projects have taken construction license from the Department of Hydroelectricity Development to generate around 7,000 MW of electricity and additional 202 such projects with a capacity of 15,000 MW have taken survey license from the department.

The growing power generation is attributed to the government’s enhanced priority to the energy sector. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba said it was committed to making policy and legal reforms and create investment-friendly environment to attract investors in various projects in Nepal. However, it also adds challenges to the government to manage the produced electricity. Since, NEA has signed power purchasing agreement (PPA) with all under construction power projects, there is no alternative to accepting this challenge. Mainly, there are two alternatives available to the country to utilise the excess energy produced in near future. First is to increase domestic consumption by encouraging existing customers to use electricity and connecting more people who are currently outside the power supply net. The second way is to export electricity to neighbouring countries including India, Bangladesh and so on. Power transmission infrastructure stands as bottleneck in managing electricity as it cannot be stored. We must build good transmission lines.

Lack of transmission lines has resulted in the wastage of 600 MW electricity in last fiscal year. Though the government has been constructing high-capacity transmission line along the river corridors for decades, there has not been expected progress in those projects due to lack of investment, local obstructions and absence of inter-agency coordination. Around 10 per cent of rural population is still out of access to electricity in lack of transmission facility. Poor infrastructures and supply system of the NEA is resulting in frequent power supply disruptions which is discouraging the existing users to entirely depend on the electricity as a source of energy. Power export potential has also been limited as there is only one 400 kV Dhalkebar- Muzaffarpur cross-border transmission line to India with transporting capacity of 1000 MW for power export.

If the country fails to develop more transmission lines for the domestic supply as well as for export purpose, there will surface a very discouraging scenario in the management of electricity in near future. As a result, the nation will face huge losses as generated power will go waste. While the country lacks capital to build transmission line as per its need, foreign assistance that can be received from friendly countries could be vital for the construction of transmission line. In this regard, the proposed 321-km long 400 kV cross-border transmission line proposed to be built under the assistance of Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) could be a crucial infrastructure in exporting surplus electricity to India and at the same time to import electricity during the dry season when Nepal faces power deficit.