Managing Director of Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) Kul Man Singh Ghising has directed technicians to complete the maintenance of Kaligandaki A hydropower plant before schedule. Inspecting the maintenance work, MD Ghising said that completion of a day earlier will generate over thirty-five million rupees.

The thorough maintenance of Inlet valve of power house and unit 2 has already begun. Shutting down completely, NEA has started maintenance of the part of design fault unit. According to NEA, this maintenance of leakage valve is necessary to avoid major accident. NEA has said that the maintenance started now to avoid any shutdown of the plant during winter.

After revealing the design fault, Japanese Company Toshiba, which manufactured and supplied the unit, agreed to perform maintenance free of cost. The last date for free maintenance is going to expire on 30 September.

Following the directive of Minister of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation Barshaman Pun to complete the maintenance in time, high level team including MD Ghising, board of directors Umesh Prasad Thani, Chandra Tandan, Chet Raj Joshi and Bhaktabahadur Pun inspected the maintenance work.

“We have been losing almost thirty-five million rupees every day. If we complete the work a day before, we will generate Rs.3 billion,” said Ghising directing technicians and head of the project.

Started on Monday, the maintenance will complete on 29 October. There are three units with a capacity of 48-48 MW. Till Thursday (27 September), Kaligandaki will completely shut down. After that only one 48 unit will be shut down.

After completion of maintenance of unit 2, Kaligandaki will be completely shut down for a week. According to NEA, it is time consumptive because there need to make 6 kilometer tunnel completely dry and it will take a week to fill the tunnel later.

“This is right time to start maintenance because there will be low demand of electricity by industries during the Dashain festival and we also run other power plants in full capacity,” said Ghising. If we start the maintenance during winter, there will have almost 15 hours of power cut in Pokhara and west of Narayani. As a picking plant, Kaligandaki can run in full capacity during picking hour.