Nepal Electricity Authority, the country’s power utility, said on Thursday that it succeeded in reducing the combined electricity leakages from the distribution network and transmission lines to 12.05 percent in the first five months of the current fiscal year.

The power leakage from these systems was 15.38 percent in the last fiscal year that ended in mid-July 2022.

The leakage in the distribution network or wired network reaching households has been causing heavy financial losses to the Nepal Electricity Authority.

According to the NEA, losses from the distribution network were brought down to 7.49 percent while transmission line losses stood at 4.56 percent.

The power utility said that 4.14 billion units of electricity were supplied in the distribution system in the first five months of the current fiscal year that ended mid-December, out of which 3.83 billion units were sold. 310 million units were leaked.

The authority said it aims to reduce the overall leakage to 14 percent by this fiscal year.

“It is a great achievement to reduce the leakage in the distribution network to 7.49 percent which was 22 percent seven years ago,” said Kulman Ghising, managing director of the Nepal Electricity Authority. “We have mobilised teams to effectively carry out the campaign for controlling the leakage further.”

According to him, once the construction of a few new substations was completed, electricity consumption in industrial areas increased and metre reading became more effective.

“Regular monitoring and actions are taken to prevent electricity theft through hooking,” he said.

He added that the enhancement of substations and feeder lines, which used to get overloaded and the replacement of conductors and transformers largely contributed to the reduction in leakage.

The highest amount of leakage was recorded at distribution centres in Janakpur and the lowest leakages were recorded in Nepalgunj, according to NEA.

The 23 distribution centres in Janakpur recorded 12.80 percent leakage on average in the first five months of the current fiscal as compared to 12.97 percent in the same period the previous year.

The distribution centres at Malangwa in Sarlahi, Maulapur in Rautahat, Simraungadh in Bara and Jaleshwar in Mahottari districts recorded a leakage of 44.83 percent, 40.55 percent, 37.82 percent and 37.61 percent, respectively, according to the NEA.

The nine distribution centres under the province divisional office at Nepalgunj recorded 3.97 percent leakage on average in the first five months of the current fiscal year, against 7.80 percent in the same period of the previous year.

In Province 1, the average electricity leakage recorded in 24 distribution centres was 7.42 percent in the review period, against 9.94 percent.

In Bagmati Province, the electricity leakage increased to 4.53 percent in six distribution centres in the review period against 4 percent in the same period last fiscal year.

The figure in the 20 distribution centres of Kathmandu decreased to 5.33 percent in the review period, from 7.47 percent.

Though the leakage decreased in Gandaki, Lumbini and Karnali provinces, it increased in Sudurpaschim Province.