Winter’s here and it’s really sad that residents of Kathmandu Valley will now be facing load shedding of 80 hours per week. Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has published a new load shedding schedule to be effective from Sunday. As per the new load shedding schedule, people will go through 11 hours of load shedding for four days and 12 hours of rolling blackout for remaining three days a week.
NEA recently curtailed the power supply few weeks ago by 63 hours per week. Also, during Christmas, energy minister Umakanta Jha told that there wouldn’t be more blackouts this winter till mid-May, not exceeding 12 hours per day. He also assured that the government was looking for purchasing electricity from India. But, NEA has now implied several causes for power cut, pointing out to the decrease of water level in the rivers and reservoirs at main hydropower plants.
As it is only mid-winter and the power cut has already reached 12 hours per day, it is likely that the public will have to face load shedding up to 16-18 hours a day this winter. Nepal has lowest per capita energy consumption in Asia. While the construction process of various potential hydropower projects is in state of conflict; the country has a power deceit of about 600 MW, increasing by 10% yearly.
You can view and download the latest LoadShedding Schedule from this page.