Page 10 - AsiaElec Week 30

AsiaElec HYDROPOWER AsiaElec
that the province was an important green energy base and electricity relay hub.
“The signing of [the] co-operation docu- ment today will encourage more co-operation and exchanges in hydropower,” Zhang said. He noted that in 2018 alone, trade between Yunnan Province and Nepal amounted to $10mn, mark- ing a 341% increase.
e HPP will be developed on the Tamakoshi river, which forms part of the Koshi river system that flows through Dolakha and Ramechhap districts. TBI said construction of the 200-MW project would be started in early 2020 and would be completed in late 2023.
“The project can be a milestone in the Sino-Nepal relations,” TBI Group’s chairman, Bhaban Bhatta, said.
But plans for Tamakoshi III have come under re because its capacity marks a scaling down from original plans to build a 650-MW HPP. And the signing ceremony resulted in contro- versy a er Nepalese government o cials told local media they had been unaware of it taking place, with China’s state-owned Xinhua being the rst to report on the event. A Nepalese Min- istry of Energy spokesman, Prabin Aryal, said he had been unaware of the event and added that the agreement was not the nal document authorising a reduction in the scheme’s capacity. “ e exact capacity will be determined only a er allthenecessarystudiesarecompleted,”hesaid.
The Nepal Electricity Regulatory Com- mission’s chairman, Dilli Bahadur Singh, was reported by local media as saying the
government had agreed to reduce the project’s capacity because a larger scheme was not eco- nomically viable. But he added that the project was still being evaluated, with its viability set to be better understood once the study is com- pleted, echoing the comments made by Aryal.
“On the one hand, the government is plan- ning to sell electricity to Bangladesh and India, while on the other, it is reducing the pre-de- termined capacity of the project. Our minister and o cials need to ‘walk the talk’ if they want to attract foreign investment, because we can’t keep changing our stance every now and then,” a high-ranking o cial at the Ministry of Energy, who did not wish to be named, told the Himala- yan Times.
e Tamakoshi III project was initially being developed by Norway’s Statkraft, which had been planning to invest $1.5bn in a 650-MW HPP that would be used to supply electricity to India. But the rm subsequently withdrew from the agreement in 2015, citing the lack of necessary cross-border transmission infra- structure for sending the power to India. ings subsequently became even more difficult for would-be power generation capacity develop- ers in Nepal, a er India introduced in Decem- ber 2016 guidelines on cross-border electricity trade that would only allow projects to be devel- oped with 51% Indian investment. ese have subsequentlybeeneased,though,andIndiahas agreed to buy Nepal’s surplus energy, as well as allowing the use of its transmission lines to export Nepalese electricity to Bangladesh.™
Nepalese government of cials told local media they had been unaware of the signing ceremony taking place, with China’s state-owned Xinhua being the rst to report on the event.
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Week 30 30•July•2019