Nepal begins selling electricity to India

NEW DELHI: Nepal started exporting electricity to India through its power exchange market last week, boosting cross-border energy cooperation.

Nepal’s hydel power installations produced excess power following the rainy season, prompting the Nepal Electricity Authority to export surplus energy to the Indian market. “We started selling 37.7MW of electricity to Indian purchasers at 12:15 a.m. on Thursday,” Suresh Bhattarai, an NEA official, told reporters in Kathmandu.

According to Bhattarai, electricity produced from Trishuli (24MV) and Devighat (15MV) was sold to India on Thursday. According to the Kathmandu Post, another NEA official, Lokendra Shahi said that the average price of power has been kept at Rs 6 per unit and the NEA made around $10 million from the sales.

For the second year in a row, Nepal is selling power to India through its exchange market. Beginning in early November of last year, NEA sold electricity from the same two projects for about a month and a half.

Last month, NEA requested bids from Indian companies to sell its 2,00MW surplus energy under a long-term power purchase agreement for the approaching monsoon season.

The NEA announced in a statement that surplus energy would be sold from July 1 to November 29. The bidding procedure is accessible to all open access users, regulated utilities, power distribution firms, and traders with valid trading licences issued by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission of India, according to the announcement. So far, India has permitted NEA to sell 346 MW on the open market, and Nepal wants to raise this number.