India will send Nepal 654 MW for 18 hours a day after the August floods

India will export up to 654 megawatts of electricity to the Nepal Electricity Authority for 18 hours a day until 31 December. The Ministry of Power announced the approval on 14 September. The window runs from midnight to 6 pm, and it is already in force from 13 September.

The split is precise. Up to 600 MW can move on the Muzaffarpur-Dhalkebar 400 kilovolt double-circuit line. Up to 54 MW can move on the Tanakpur-Mahendranagar 132 kilovolt single-circuit line. Volumes from January 2027 will be reviewed in December.

The cause is not a seasonal dip. Floods triggered by an ice-rock avalanche near the Nepal-Tibet border on 26 August tore through northern and central Nepal. Nepal's disaster authority put the death toll at 1,385 by 11 September, with 5,130 people still missing. More than 12 hydropower plants were swept away or badly damaged. About 900 power-station workers were among the missing, which is a labour shock on top of a machine shock.

CNBC-TV18 had reported at the end of August that about 550 MW of generation looked damaged and that Nepal's exports to India had already fallen by about 400 MW. Hydropower is almost all of Nepal's electricity and had become an export earner. That flow has reversed. Kathmandu stopped sending power out and asked Delhi to send power in.

Why 18 hours and why these two lines

Eighteen hours, midnight to 6 pm, covers the night trough and the working day. It leaves the Indian evening peak, when domestic demand is highest, outside the export window. That is the constraint you would expect a surplus-but-not-infinite system to write into an emergency approval.

Muzaffarpur-Dhalkebar is the high-capacity link. Tanakpur-Mahendranagar is the older, smaller western line. Together they are the two circuits that can take a sudden 654 MW without a new tower being built. The approval is therefore an operating decision, not a construction announcement.

BW Businessworld put the lost generation at about a tenth of Nepal's capacity and said the Bagmati hydropower belt took the worst of the water. When a country that sells monsoon surplus in a normal year loses that surplus in a single week, the buyer next door becomes the supplier. India and Nepal have done this swap before. The numbers this time are larger because the damage is larger.

What December's review will actually test

The ministry said the January 2027 quantum will be reviewed in December 2026. By then two things will be clearer. First, how much of the wrecked plant can be brought back before winter demand rises in the hills. Second, how much spare power India itself has after a quarter of high wholesale fuel prices. August WPI fuel inflation printed 22.93 percent. Exporting 654 MW for 18 hours is not free in that price setting. It is a political and grid choice.

For Nepal the immediate effect is hours of light and industry that would otherwise have been shed. For India the effect is a claim on goodwill in a year when both governments have other files open, from flood early-warning data discussed at BRICS to the usual transit arguments. The Power Ministry's statement stayed inside the energy brief: help in a difficult period, longstanding cooperation, review in December.

Grid operators on both sides now have a three-and-a-half-month schedule. 600 MW on one line and 54 MW on the other, 18 hours a day, no promise beyond 31 December. If the plants in Bagmati stay down, December's review will be an argument about winter, not about going back to the old export direction.