Nepal exported electricity worth Rs 4.19 billion (INR 2.62 billion) to India in one month between mid-July and mid-August this year.

According to Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), it exported electricity worth Rs 131.1 million every day in the last one month. The rate of electricity sold to the southern neighbor was Rs 8.51 per unit.

The NEA Managing Director Kulman Ghising said the authority is in a position to sell more than 700 MW of electricity on a daily basis. “We have been exporting excess electricity left over after daily consumption in the domestic market,” he said.

In fiscal year 2023/24, Nepal became a net exporter of electricity and earned Rs 120 million in energy transactions with India. During the period, the country exported electricity worth Rs 16.93 billion to India while it spent Rs 16.81 billion to purchase electricity from its southern neighbor.

Ghising said Nepal still has to rely on imports from India to meet the energy demand during winter. “However, the import will go on decreasing as we have been excelling in production capacity,” said Ghising, adding that they have rendered high priority to increase domestic consumption by improvement in distribution system.

According to the NEA, Nepal’s electricity production capacity has reached 3,157 MW at present. The production capacity has tripled in the past eight years. On the other hand, the peak electricity demand of the country has reached 2,650 MW.

With surplus electricity in hand, the water resource rich country is looking forward to selling its excess energy to its neighboring countries including India and Bangladesh. In January, Nepal inked an agreement with India to sell 10,000 MW of electricity over the next 10 years.

It was for the first time in October 2021 when India had approved 39 MW of power imports from Nepal. In less than three years’ period, this figure has grown by more than 24-fold.

For the past few years, the NEA has been exporting domestically produced electricity to India in the peak production time. In 2023, it exported 1.7371 billion of electricity to India from June 11 to December 6.

Recently, India has consented to purchase an additional 251 MW of electricity produced by 12 hydropower projects in Nepal. With the added electricity in place, Nepal can now sell a total of 941 MW of electricity produced by 28 hydropower projects to its southern neighbor.