Kathmandu, January 29

India will charge the 400kV double-circuit Dhalkebar-Muzaffarpur transmission line on its side on Saturday, Indian Power Secretary Pradeep Kumar Pujari said today.

This will pave the way to bring the biggest Nepal-India transmission line project into operation.

However, the line will not be charged at full capacity of 400kV in the initial phase.

“We’ll initially charge it at 132kV,” Pujari told an interaction organised by Nepal-India Chamber of Commerce and Industry here today.

This will allow the country to import 80 megawatts of electricity from India. However, Nepal will not be able to take benefit of this facility immediately because works on Nepali side are yet to be completed.

“We still have not installed cable on a small section of the transmission corridor,” Energy Secretary Suman Prasad Sharma said.

Nepal expects to complete this work within the first week of February. “We will then charge the line on our side by February 8,” Sharma said. The country will then begin importing 80MW of electricity from India from March.

Nepal expects to upgrade the capacity of the line to 220kV in the next five to six months  albeit infrastructure on the Indian side has been built to support this capacity.

“Once Nepal upgrades the capacity, it can import additional 200MW of electricity,” Pujari said, adding, “The line will ultimately have to be charged at full capacity of 400kV, which will allow Nepal to import 600MW of electricity.”

The line is scheduled to be charged at full capacity by September 2017.

The 140-km transmission line extends from Dhalkebar in Nepal to Muzaffarpur in India. Around 40-km of the transmission line lies in Nepal, and the remaining in India.

Although the construction of the transmission line began as early as January 2007, works could not proceed ahead on time due to various problems, including bureaucratic red tape.

The works related to construction of the transmission line in Nepali side are being overseen by Power Transmission Company Nepal, which is a joint venture between state-owned Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), Hydroelectric Investment and Development Company of India, Power Grid Corporation of India and India company IL&FS.

Works in the Indian side, on the other hand, are being implemented by Cross-border Power Transmission Company, a joint venture in which NEA has 10 per cent stake.