Nepal cuts power sales to India by half after floods hit 13 hydropower plants

Nepal slashed electricity deliveries to India from about 800 megawatts to at least 400 megawatts after Wednesday's flash floods damaged hydropower plants along the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli, a senior Indian official told The Indian Express on Thursday. Grid India data show India was taking a peak of 963.4 MW from Nepal on 26 August, the day the water hit. The 14 MW Devighat plant, which feeds the Indian grid, was among the units affected. Chilime and Trishuli, which also supply a smaller seasonal flow onward to Bangladesh across Indian wires, were hit as well.

Nepal's energy ministry said about 13 hydro plants and one solar plant were damaged. Named operational projects include Upper Trishuli-1 (216 MW), Rasuwagadhi (111 MW), Rasuwa Bhotekoshi (120 MW), Sanjen Khola (78 MW), Chilime (22 MW), Trishuli (24 MW), Devighat (14.1 MW), Upper Trishuli-3A (60 MW) and Upper Trishuli-3B (37 MW). The Independent Power Producers' Association Nepal counted eight running projects totalling 354 MW offline and five under-construction projects also damaged. Ministry spokesman Shaligram Bhandari put the lost operating capacity near 360 MW, about 8 percent of Nepal's roughly 4,300 MW of generation, more than 90 percent of it hydro.

The seasonal swap runs backward

Nepal usually exports surplus monsoon power to India and imports in winter when rivers drop. Last year it supplied 600 MW around the clock for six months through November and had planned another 500 MW this year. A longer memorandum contemplates India taking up to 10,000 MW from Nepal over a decade. The flood has flipped the flow. Bhandari said repair crews are working and that Nepal may need to buy from India to cover the hole.

Every megawatt Nepal sells to Bangladesh already crosses the Indian grid, from the Dhalkebar-Muzaffarpur 400 kV line in Bihar to the Baharampur-Bheramara line in West Bengal. That 40 MW seasonal sale, priced at 6.40 U.S. cents under a five-year tripartite deal, is now hostage to damaged turbines at Trishuli and Chilime and to whatever capacity India is willing to wheel. New Delhi's Central Electricity Authority had already refused a rise from 40 MW to 60 MW earlier this year, citing transmission limits.

Power is the second Indian file in the valley

The same flood has left hundreds of Indians uncontactable and prompted a third C-130J relief flight. Seventy-three of the missing Indians worked at the Trishuli power project. The plant that sent watts west is also the plant that held Indian workers when the river came down. Search teams and grid operators are now on the same stretch of valley for different reasons.

Hydropower is how Nepal earns hard currency in the wet months. Losing 360 MW in August, at the peak of the export season, is a budget event as well as a blackout risk. India can absorb a 400 MW cut more easily than Nepal can absorb the same cut at home. The official who described the halved export was describing a neighbour's damaged asset. The next dispatch from Grid India will show whether 400 MW holds, falls further, or reverses into an Indian export as Kathmandu's spokesman suggested.