Nepal and India plan to build at least five cross-border transmission lines in order to evacuate at least 16,000 megawatts of power by 2035. To lay the ground for the same, the energy secretaries of Nepal and India are meeting in New Delhi on Tuesday.

Suresh Acharya, secretary at the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation left for New Delhi on Monday at the head of a 12-member delegation to take part in the meeting.

The meeting is expected to come up with a roadmap for constructing various cross border transmission lines to facilitate the export of 16,000 megawatts of energy to India and Bangladesh.

The secretary-level meeting will endorse and adopt the minutes and decisions made at the 12th Joint Working Group on Power Sector Cooperation in India in the last week of January, Sandip Dev, joint secretary at Ministry of Energy, told the Post over the phone from New Delhi.

In the January meeting at joint secretary level, officials from the two countries had agreed to build, upgrade and finalise investment modalities for five cross-border transmission lines.

Once these transmission lines are completed, Nepal will export more energy to Bangladesh via India. Currently, Nepal supplies 40 megawatts of energy to Bangladesh.

By 2020, we are in discussion with the Indian side to complete the construction of Inaruwa (Duhabi)-Purnia (Bihar) and Dodhara (Lamki)-Bareli (Uttar Pradesh) cross-border transmission lines through a joint venture involving entities from both countries, he said.

The two sides agreed on investment modality in the January meeting, but the decision needs to be endorsed by a higher mechanism. The capacity of these two transmission lines will be 400kV each.

By 2035, besides these two 400kV transmission lines, three more cross border transmission lines of 400kv and 220kv will be built, said Dev.

These transmission lines are the 400 kV Nijgadh (Bara)-Motihari (Bihar); the Kohalpur-Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh); and the 220 kV double circuit Chameliya-Jaulajiwi cross-border line.

The Chameliya-Jaulajiwi line is expected to be completed by 2027. A detailed project report for this project is set to be finalised by March.

The meeting will approve the construction of these cross border lines and ensure that the deadlines are met, as discussed in previous meetings, Dev said.

The two sides have already agreed on the investment modalities for these projects during the joint secretary-level meeting in January-end.

Meanwhile, the construction of another 400kv Butwal-Gorakhpur line is underway. According to the Department of Electricity Development, 11,000 megawatts of electricity from various hydro projects will soon be added to the national grid. Also, power purchase agreements for 20,000 megawatts have been proposed by developers, which the department is considering.

The two countries have already agreed to complete the Duhabi-Purnia power line by 2027-2028 and Dodhara-Bareli by 2028-2029, but the deadlines have now been slightly changed.

Similarly, in the last meeting, officials agreed to scale up the capacity of the 400kV Dhalkebar-Muzaffarpur cross-border line, which is currently the only high-capacity connection between the neighbours. The upgraded line will allow either country to import or export between 1,000 and 1,100 MW of energy, said Dev. This project will be completed by 2030.

With India promising to buy as much as 10,000MW from Nepal over the next 10 years under a long-term power trade agreement, more high-capacity lines will be needed.

Four such high-capacity cross-border transmission lines are currently in the pipeline. The SJVN Arun-3 Power Development Company, the 900MW Arun 3 Hydropower Project developer, has been constructing a 400kV Dhalkebar-Sitamarhi line capable of transmitting up to 2,000MW.

Likewise, construction of the New Butwal-Gorakhpur Transmission Line, which will supply up to 3,500MW, is underway following its joint inauguration by then-Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in June 2023.

Officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Energy, the Nepali Embassy in New Delhi, the Nepal Electricity Authority, and the Department of Electricity Development will attend the meeting.

After the energy secretary-level meeting, officials from two sides will sit for the meeting of the power exchange committee that will discuss power exchange between Nepal and India as well as energy rates. Nepal is looking for no change in the rate of energy that it imports from various Indian states, according to officials.