Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has put into operation a state-of-the-art data center of international level. In order to be able to provide services to commercial companies in the future, the authority has put into operation an international data center with state-of-the-art facilities along with the load dispatch center at Suchatar in Kathmandu.

Constructed with a concessional loan from Asian Development Bank, the Center is first of its kin which will have all kinds of data regarding the supply of electricty.

‘On the ground floor of the three-storey building prepared using pre-fabricated containers, there is the monitoring, regulation and control and security operation room of the underground electricity distribution system of Kathmandu Valley. The first floor houses the office and network operations room and the top floor houses the data center.

The data center has been built in compliance with Tier 3 international standards prescribed for data centers. The data center of this model built under the Digital NEA program is the first in Nepal to fulfill the purpose of the authority to make its service delivery digital and modern. In the data center, all the data including the server related to the information technology of the authority will be stored in an integrated manner

Kulman Ghising, Managing Director of the NEA, said that with the data center in operation, the authority is now going to create its own private cloud for data storage. Executive Director Ghising mentioned that the process of building a disaster recovery center at the new Wootwal substation in Sunwal, Nawalparasi for data security has progressed.

Until the disaster recovery center is constructed, the old data center at the head office of the authority will be operated as a recovery center. There are 40 information technology racks in the new data center that has been put into operation.

It has 36 servers and 4 network racks. Uninterruptible power supply (N plus one power supply), humidity (cooling), automatic fire control, CCTV monitoring, continuous monitoring of operation and safety etc. have been arranged to meet the requirements of Tier 3 standards. Alternative arrangements have been made for uninterrupted power supply.

Two generators of 1 megawatt capacity have been kept ready to operate the data center safely in case there is a problem in the local and country's power system. Two modular UPS of 300 KVA capacity have been installed.

Considering the reliability of UPS, lithium battery has been used. The center does not need to be closed for maintenance and replacement of equipment.

An optical fiber with an alternative route has been installed to connect the head office and data center of the authority at Ratnapark. The authority's head office and data center are connected through optical fiber from Teku and Balaju. Staff are deployed to operate the data center 24 hours a day

In addition to the data center, an infrastructure structure has been built that can monitor, regulate and control the underground distribution system under construction to automate the electricity distribution system in Kathmandu Valley. Substations and switching stations of the valley will be connected to it.

From the center, it is possible to manage, monitor and control the power distribution system reaching the customer's house below 11 KV. A charging station has also been put into operation in the data center premises so that three electric vehicles can be charged simultaneously.

Chinese company Yantai Dongfang Wisdom Electric Co., Ltd.. for the construction of the center. The contract was signed in July 2021 with 9Thballatbash Mylanablan Dshkamaym and the work started from November of the same year. The estimated cost of the center, which was built with the investment of the government and the authority and the concessional loan of the Asian Development Bank, is about 1.4 billion rupees.