By A Staff Reporter

Kathmandu, Feb : 17 The leakage of electricity in distribution system has been reduced significantly during the first six months of the current fiscal year.

The average power leakage came down by 1.5 per cent to 9.78 per cent during the first six months of the current fiscal year, according to the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA). Power leakage under distribution was 11.28 per cent by the end of the last fiscal year 2018/19.

The NEA has been working aggressively to improve its service delivery and reduce power leakage in the distribution to 8.5 per cent by the end of the current fiscal year.

Power leakage has been continuously decreasing over the last few years. Leakage in both distribution and transmission systems was reduced to 15.32 per cent by the end of last fiscal year while it was 25.78 per cent in 2015/16.

The NEA has targeted to bring down the leakage to 13 per cent by the end of the current fiscal year.

He said that the NEA would be able to achieve the target of reducing power leakage to 13 per cent by the end of the current fiscal year.

According to Managing Director of NEA Kul Man Ghising, NEA was able to generate additional income of Rs. 10 billion annually by controlling power leakage.

“Steps taken by the NEA to control the technical and non-technical losses in the supply of power have yielded positive results,” he said.

He said that the NEA had been carrying out a campaign to control theft and hooking tendency, recover dues and encourage customers to have metres which has helped reduce power leakage in distribution system.

“Average leakage of power in the developed countries stands at 5 per cent. The average power leakage of our country will be in line with the developed countries after under construction sub-stations will come into operation,” he said.

The power utility has signed performance contract with its staff to control power leakage and bring improvement in service delivery and customer service.

A total of 138 office chiefs of the NEA, including 129 chiefs of distribution centres, have signed performance agreement with the NEA management for the current fiscal year.

NEA has also implemented the enhanced performance reward (EPR) to encourage the employees to improve the services and control electricity leakage.

To encourage the people to receive electricity metres, NEA has been distributing metres to the extremely poor people free of cost even without the recommendation of the local governments and providing metres to the landless people easily.

Hara Raj Neupane, Deputy Managing Director of NEA, said that every distribution centre was organising different campaigns to control electricity theft.

Leakage and technical loss of electricity in Bagmati State has decreased to 7 per cent from 7.40 per cent in the first six months of the current fiscal year. The share of Bagmati State in revenue collection of NEA stands at 28 per cent from the sale of electricity.

The electricity leakage in State 2, which is second highest contributor in revenue collection of NEA, was reduced to 14.34 per cent from 15.48 per cent during the review period. The State has to reduce leakage to 10.97 per cent by the end of the current fiscal year.

The Biratnagar office of State 1 was able to reduce electricity leakage to 9.88 per cent from 11.84 per cent, Gandaki State office has reduced leakage to 8.75 per cent from 10.43 per cent during the review period.

Likewise, the Office of State 5 Butwal has reduced leakage to 9.93 per cent form 12.36 per cent and Skurkhet office of Karnali State has reduced leakage to 14.98 per cent from 19.90 per cent during the review period.
Power leakage in Sudurpaschim State reduced to 8 per cent from 14.39 per cent during the first six months of the current fiscal year.