Kathmandu 9 August : In a significant change the Sher Bahadur Deuba government has granted India’s NHPC to research and design two hydroelectric power projects which will have the potential of producing 1200 megawatts of energy.A meeting of the Investment Board Nepal chaired by Prime Minister Deuba on Monday, decided to let the NHPC to examine and develop the 700 milliwatt West Seti Storage Hydropower Project and the 450 milliwatts Seti River-6 Hydropower Project in Sudurpaschim province.
The West Seti project is one of the most hyped-up projects that were planned for development around four decades ago.Both projects are located in the west region of Nepal.
Both are storage-related projects.
The board endorsed the draft of the memorandum of understanding to be signed with the Indian company, as per an announcement by the Investment Board.
The NHPC Limited, an Indian hydropower authority of the government under the Union Ministry of Power, had submitted an application in May, to begin developing the project.
The West Seti project, first imagined around six years ago, is situated in the Seti river in the western region of Nepal.
The dam site proposed is located 82 kilometers upstream of the confluence of the Seti and Karnali rivers, and forms the northern part of the Ganges basin.
The sites for the new development are situated at elevations of 560 to 920 metres and are scattered across six districts.The projected price of this project as per the Investment Board, is $2.4 billion.
In addition to approuving the MoU to be signed with the NHPC Limited, the board meeting also directed the office of the IBN to begin preparations to approve investment to fund the construction of the 679MW Lower Arun Hydropower Project.India’s SJVN Limited, which is also working on the 900MW Arun 3 project was awarded the Lower Arun project in July this year.
In the same way that Nepal as well as India are looking to strengthen collaboration in the hydropower industry recently the Indian state-owned firm has come up with the idea of developing the West Seti projects.
The announcement follows Nepal and India in April released an agreement on a common vision statement for energy.
It talks about expanding mutually beneficial collaboration in the energy sector, including jointly developing of power generation initiatives in Nepal and India; the development of trans-border transmission infrastructures as well as bidirectional power trade with an appropriate access to the electricity market in both countries with mutual benefits and market demand, as well as the relevant domestic laws of each country and coordination of the operations of national grids; and cooperation between institutions in sharing the latest operational information, technology , and know-how.
In particular, Indian state-owned companies have been more involved and keen to develop hydropower power projects in Nepal.
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