Speaking at the Power Summit 2023, organized by the Independent Power Producers' Nepal (IPPAN), government officials said real-time trading and long-term markets are other options that Nepal wants to guarantee from India to sell its electricity. “It is necessary to have every type of market available for selling Nepal’s power in India,” said Dinesh Ghimire, Secretary at the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation, at one of the discussion sessions during the summit. “India has also assured us that it will provide access to all types of markets.”
He said that the government was also seeking to sign a long-term inter-government agreement of trading of power between the two neighbors. Nepal is seeking a 25-year-long inter-governmental agreement with India on selling Nepal’s surplus power. During the 10th Joint Steering Committee meeting held in India in February, Indian officials had notified Nepal that it was working to allow Nepal to participate in real-time trading of power in the Indian market. Access to the real-time market would allow Nepal to sell power anytime and prevent power from being spilled. Nepal sold electricity worth over Rs 11 billion in the last wet season (June-November 2022) in the Indian day-ahead market. Kul Man Ghising, Managing Director of Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) also expressed hope that the real-time trading market and long-term market would be opened very soon by the Indian regulator for Nepal’s power. “There is a very optimistic scenario for the export market,” he said. “If we cannot be confident about the domestic and export market, we cannot attract investment in Nepal’s hydropower sector.” Nepal is seeking access to all types of India’s power market as the country is seeking to become a net exporter of power in the next few years. Addressing the inaugural ceremony of the two-day summit that began on Tuesday, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal said Nepal could be a net power exporter by 2025. “Due to the accelerated pace of development of hydropower projects both from Independent Power Producers ( IPPs) and state utilities, we anticipate to be a net exporter of electricity by 2025 without any need to import even in the dry season,” he said. He said that even though Nepal’s key priority was to ensure high domestic consumption of electricity, Nepal is seeking to export power to protect the huge amount of money already invested in power generation until enough infrastructure is built in Nepal to utilize the generated electricity internally. “It is of equal importance, for economic reasons, to engage ourselves in the cross-border power trade in view of utilizing cheap and diverse resources existing in the region and sub-region,” he said. Bhupinder Singh, Director of Energy of Confederation of Indian Industries said that Nepal’s export to India would help the Indian market to be more competitive. “Indian consumers want a cheaper market and efforts should be made to make the price of electricity cheaper,” he mentioned. However, Nepali officials said that Nepal’s hydropower has continued to remain cheaper. Energy Secretary Ghimire said that the prices of Nepal’s hydropower should not be compared with that of the solar and wind energy in India. “Nepal’s hydropower will play a balancing role in India’s energy market,” he said.
