Himal Press 
KATHMANDU: India has okayed the proposal of the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) to export an additional 251 MW of electricity from 12 hydropower projects.
NEA has announced that Nepal will export electricity to India’s Bihar state for the first time through a medium-term power sale agreement.
Nepal exported electricity worth Rs 16.93 billion to India in fiscal year 2023/24. With this, Nepal has transformed from a net importer to an electricity exporter.
Previously, Nepal had been exporting 690 MW generated by 16 projects. With the fresh development, Nepal will now export hydropower generated by 28 projects. This will take Npeal’s total energy exports to India to 941 MW.
Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar expressed pleasure at Nepal’s imminent export of 1,000 MW of electricity. “Glad to note that Nepal will be exporting close to 1000 MW of electricity to India, a new milestone,” Jaishankar wrote in a post on social media platform X after a meeting with Foreign Minister Dr Arzu Rana Deuba.
Dr Deuba is on a five-day visit of India.
India first permitted the export of 39 MW of electricity from Nepal in October 2021. Nepal started its first energy export by selling in the Indian Energy Exchange’s Day Ahead Market. Since then, India has also provided Nepal access to the Real-Time Market. Nepal Electricity Authority has also signed medium-term power sale agreements with distribution companies in Haryana and Bihar.
India has opened a provision to count hydropower imports from Nepal as part of the Hydropower Purchase Obligation (HPO) for Indian buyers, encouraging them to purchase electricity from Nepal.
The long-term energy agreement between Nepal and India envisions selling up to 10,000 megawatts of electricity to India over the next 10 years. Nepal can now export nearly 1,000 MW to India in the first year of the agreement.
With these developments, Nepal is on its way to becoming a major hydropower exporter in the South Asian region. There was a plan to sign an agreement to sell 40 MW of electricity to Bangladesh on July 29. However, it was postponed due to recent political developments in Bangladesh.
