Preview

Can Solar Energy Be a Viable Alternative for Electricity Generation in Nepal?

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1088 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Can Solar Energy Be a Viable Alternative for Electricity Generation in Nepal?
Can Solar Energy be a viable alternative for electricity generation in Nepal?

“The sun bathes the earth in a steady, enormous flow of radiant energy that far exceeds what the world requires for electricity fuel.”
The last decade has been harsh enough for the people of Nepal. The power cut being hiked up to 16 hours a day in 2009 provides testimony to the fact that Nepal has been hard hit by energy crisis. Given the over-increasing population, along with rapid industrialization and urbanization, the demand of electricity continues to mount, especially in urban and commercial areas. The nation, however, has not been able to supply enough to meet its demand. This year itself the power cut roared up to 80 hours a week. The Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) concedes that severity of load shedding will not diminish in the short term (refer to “Bartaman Load Shedding Lai Tat Kaal Samadhan Garni Upaya Haru Ko Sammandha Ma Sabai Pakchya Haru Ko Adhyan Gari Sujav Dina Jal Shrot Mantralaya Ko Nirnaya Anusar Gathit Samiti le Pesh Gare Ko Pratibedhan report originally available at - www.nea.org.np)
Electricity is a prerequisite for any economic activity. Absence of electricity extensively hampers the overall productivity of an economy- households, businesses, enterprises, industries, communications, industries, education, service sector et cetera. Due to acute power crunch, cost of production of industries is going up, cost competitiveness of Nepalese products is decreasing, industries are closing down, production is being winded down, a shortfall in domestic production is leading to an increase in imports of even the most basic goods and services (contributing to widening trade deficit), and future growth potential is being severely crippled. Nepal’s electricity generation has been dominated by hydropower. Despite Nepal’s huge hydropower potential, approximately 40,000 MW of economically feasible hydropower potential, it has not been able to utilize even 1/40th of it. The

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Power Crisis in Bangladesh

    • 1852 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Power plays a great role wherever people lives and works in industry, agriculture, and transportation etc. The living standard and prosperity of a nation vary directly with increase in use of power. As technology is advancing the consumption of power is steadily rising. Sufficient and reliable source of electricity is a major prerequisite for a sustained and successful economic development effort and poverty reduction. In Bangladesh, 90 million of the populations out of 140 million do not have direct access to electricity and remaining 50 million people have access but reliable and quality power is still beyond their reach (BPDB, 2007). In order to achieve the growth rate, availability of a reasonably priced and reliable source of electricity is a prerequisite. Present generation of electric power in Bangladesh is not sufficient to meet the consumers growing demand. So it is not possible to ensure a constant supply of electric power to all consumers throughout the country. Moreover the demand is increasing day by day. So it is essential to set up more generating station for over demanding load.…

    • 1852 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    From the figure, the positive correlation of the GDP growth and the electricity consumption can be observed. As seen in the figure, post 1990s the carbon emitted from the electricity sector has reduced. Also, the consumption of electricity has growth at the higher rate than that of GDP. In the next few sections we will try to synthesize what will be the relationship between GDP, Electricity consumption and environment in the future (Till year 2030). The focus will be on the power plants. After assessing the relationship between GDP, power sector and emissions we will enumerate the various instruments that the government of India can formulate to regulate the power sector and environment. 2. Power Sector of India Power is a critical infrastructure for economic development and improving the quality of life. For this reason, Power has been given due importance by the policy makers of India since independence. Since independence the generating capacity has increased from 1.362 GW to over 100GW in 2002. Over 500000 villages have been electrified. These are achievements in themselves. However, there have been certain problems. Some of the…

    • 10546 Words
    • 43 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    1. Introduction 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Indian Power Sector – Current Scenario Background to the Reforms Reform Process Current Scenario Literature Review Objectives Hypotheses Methodology & Data Sources Reform in Power Generation and Its Impact Reform in Power Distribution and Its Impact Conclusion References…

    • 5185 Words
    • 21 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The country is facing acute power shortage. The power deficit has touched an all time high during summer 2008. The peaking shortage was 13% with an energy shortage of 9%.. During the 10th plan period, the generation capacity addition was just 21,180 MW, a mere 51% of the original target of 41,110 MW. For the 11th plan period the government has set another ambitious target of 78,577 MW but the progress during the first year of the plan (2007-08) was only 9,263 MW which was around 57% only of the target of 16,335 MW. Steep increase in liquid fuel cost, failure of rain and acute shortage of coal have made the situation worse during the current year.1 This calls of opportunities of huge investments in power generation.…

    • 1831 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Bangladesh situated in the north-eastern part of south Asia is among the world’s most densely populated nations (1099 people/km2 in 2010) with a population of 162.20 million in 2011. Energy, and more explicitly electricity, is a prerequisite for the technological development, higher economic growth and poverty reduction of a nation. The future economic development of…

    • 2152 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The country is going down fall and has plunged into the worst crisis of energy since 2007; it is because of the rising demand for electricity in the country. A study has told that the demand for electricity has entered into double digit figure following increasing sale of electrical and electronic appliances. The Pakistan Economic Survey for the year of 2003 and 2004 has told us that the consumption of electricity has increased by 8.6 per cent in the entire. People are now demanding and adopting more luxurious life style which has increased this demand. This survey has unveiled that the household sector is the biggest consumer of electricity which use to use almost 44.2 per cent of total the electricity consumption in the country. Where as industrial sector is using 31.1 per cent of electricity, agriculture sector is consuming 14.3 per cent, all other government sector are consuming 7.4 per cent, the commercial sector is liable to consume 5.5 per cent and the rest of 0.7 per cent is being consumed on the street lights.…

    • 1400 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Business Model Innovation

    • 10764 Words
    • 44 Pages

    Sustainability of decentralized woodfuel-based power plant: an experience in India. Energy 29, 12. Gilbert, N., 2001. Researching Social Life, 2nd ed. Sage Publishers, London. Gradl, C., Knobloch, C., 2011. Energize the BoP: Energy Business Model Generator for Low Income Markets—A Practitioner’s Guide. Endeva. Granovetter, M., McGuire, P., 1998. The Making of an Industry: Electricity in the United States, in: Callon, M. (Ed.), The Laws of the Markets Blackwell Publishers/The Sociological Review Oxford. ¨ Gulberg, M., Ilskog, E., Katyega, M., Kjellstrom, B., 2005. Village electrification technologies—an evaluation of photovoltaic cells and compact fluorescent lamps and their applicability in rural villages based on a Tanzanian case study. Energy Policy 33, 10. Gurung, A., Kumar Ghimeray, A., Hassan, S.H.A., 2011. The prospects of renewable energy technologies for rural electrification: a review from Nepal. Energy Policy. Hossein Mondal, M.A., Kamp, L.M., Pachovam, N.I., 2010. Drivers, barriers and strategies for implementation of renewable energy technologies in rural areas in Bangladesh—an innovation system analysis. Energy Policy 38, 9. Howells, M.I., Alfstad, T., Victor, D.G., Goldstein, G., Remme, U., 2005. A model of household energy services in a low-income rural African village. Energy Policy 33, 18. ¨ Howells, M.I., Jonsson, S., Kack, E., Lloyd, P., Bennett, K., Leiman, T., Conradie, B., 2010. Calabashes for kilowatt-hours: rural energy and market failure. Energy Policy 38, 2729–2738. IDEO, 2009. Human Centered Design—Toolkit, in: IDEO (Ed.), HCD Connect. IEA, 2010. Technology Roadmap, Solar Photovoltaic Energy in: International Energy Agency (Ed.), Technology Roadmaps. IEA. Jacobson, A., 2007. Connective power: solar electrification and social change in Kenya.…

    • 10764 Words
    • 44 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Black Magic

    • 3117 Words
    • 13 Pages

    The world’s worst power outage affected 600 million people, business worth an estimated $1.5 billion was lost, trains stopped, flight schedules were thrown out of gear, and miners were trapped, in deep coal shafts and hospitals had to switch the emergency operators. That’s half of the population in the darkness on 31st July 2012. This is because of the failures of three grids in supplying to north, eastern, north eastern regions of the country. In recent times power outrages made headlines in US, Canada, Brazil and Greece. This is not exception to India, but this crisis in not an ordinary crisis, because investors are looking infrastructure support from the government of India. Repeated grid failures may create a negative opinion about India in international market. Industry experts concur that there is serious shortage of electricity in India. The annexure- III explains very clearly that power loss is taking place that power projects that get delayed or stalled for want of environment forest coal block clearance and public agitations. Ministry of power had to battle serious fuel linkages that required generating power and environmental issues, apart land acquisition problems through people agitations.…

    • 3117 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Advantages of Hydropower

    • 392 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Hydropower is the only feasible and rational solution in solving the energy crisis in case of Nepal. Hydropower is environment friendly and non polluting system of energy. It has less direct impact on ecology and environment compared to the other energy sources like nuclear power. Moreover, water being recurrent in nature's streams, it is a renewable source of energy and causes no strain on non renewable sources of energy like fossil fuels which are not in abundance in Nepal, thus, reducing the dependency on them. As no fuel is used in production of the energy it is a cheap source of energy.…

    • 392 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The development of any state depends to a large extent on availability and usage of electricity. Haryana is one of the fastest growing States of India. Major input in its developmental growth is electricity. Though Haryana Power Sector has been making all out efforts to increase installed capacity of generation successfully, however, the pace of development has been faster. Consequently, the State is facing a gap between demand and availability.…

    • 279 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    This is not only about the export but the national producers are shifting their production plants in the nearby countries like Bangladesh and China where electricity supply is convenient and side by side cheap. In the past 4 years the modern cities are experiencing about 8-12 hours of load shedding as compared to the rural areas where load shedding has accede to almost 12-14 hours of load shedding. This power shortage is also affecting the gross domestic product of our country as the country’s GDP is decreasing to 2% every passing year indicating a destructive economic breakdown in near future if this problem is not coped up.…

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    As a result of the drought in 1979, the Indian economy received a severe jolt. All of a sudden it was reported that there was acute power-famine. There was a wide gap between demand for electricity and its supply. Power cuts were imposed for long periods. To conserve electricity, market timings were changed from 8 A.M. to 7 P.M. Electricity was not supplied to consumers for several hours every day. Power-cuts were imposed even on industrial concerns, resulting in a slackening of the pace of industrial production. Enough of electricity was not available even for agricultural purposes.…

    • 722 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hydropower in Nepal

    • 504 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Nepal's electricity generation is dominated by hydropower, though in the entire scenario of energy use of the country, the electricity is a tiny fraction, only 1% energy need is fulfilled by electricity. The bulk of the energy need is dominated by fuel wood (68%), agricultural waste (15%), animal dung (8%) and imported fossil fuel (8%). The other fact is that only about 40% of Nepal's population has access to electricity. With this scenario and having immense potential of hydropower development, it is important for Nepal to increase its energy dependency on electricity with hydropower development. This contributes to deforestation, soil erosion and depletion, and increased flooding downstream in the Ganges plain. Shortage of wood also pushes farmers to burn animal dung, which is needed for agriculture. Not only this, the development of hydropower will help to achieve the millennium development goals with protecting environment, increasing literacy, improving health of children and women with better energy. Growing environmental…

    • 504 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    At the outset, it must be stated that the reduced domestic demand is at best a temporary phenomenon. The power sector in India is bound to grow and this will undoubtedly boost demand from the Utilities, quite apart from the industrial demand which will continue to grow with increased industrial output. The poor financial health of the SEBs is however a damper that…

    • 7050 Words
    • 29 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The story of power position in Nepal is that of highest potential and lowest consumption. The electricity demand in Nepal is increasing by about 10 percent every year and close to 40 percent of the approximate Nepalese population has access to electricity so far. The main load centre is the central zone which includes the Kathmandu Valley. Nepal owns a number of hydropower plants with average total installed capacity of around 650 MW which includes several small and medium hydropower plants.…

    • 1623 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays