As per yesterday’s edition of Himalayan Times:
The nation is likely to witness 16 hours of load shedding per day starting from November as no power is likely to be added to the main grid in between.
“It is almost sure that load shedding hours will go up to at least of 16 hours as the demand for energy increases by about 80 MW each year; and the government has the policy of adding around two lakh households each year to the main grid line,” said Diwakar Paudel, Deputy Managing Director, Finance, Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA).
The article then goes on to say:
In 2009 the annual peak hour demand was recorded 885.28 MW which is 8.96 per cent higher than the 2008 demand of 812.5 MW. NEA cut down the 16-hour load shedding to 12 hours last year, buying 60 MW electricity from India. “There are slim chances that we will be able to increase electricity import from India this year. In the last one year we received only around 20 MW in the national grid from domestic production,” said Shankar Prasad Koirala, Secretary, Ministry of Energy. “But the demand may increase by at least 80 MW this year, causing load shedding hours to go up.”
While this goes on to assert the sorry state of our nation’s energy production capability, this is NOT something we want to gloat on. True, our business does benefit from load-shedding hours going up, but the amount of solar we sell (not just Gham Power, but all solar companies in Nepal combined) is a small drop in the bucket compared to the need of the nation. And unless our government, policy-makers, and the various INGO’s supposedly working to help our nation’s development, if they don’t do anything major in terms of promoting adoption of renewable energy like solar by introducing subsidies and low-interest loans, companies like Gham Power on their own can’t make solar affordable for the masses (although we are trying our best by continuously innovating as aggressively as we can).
However, the people and organizations that we CAN help despite all of this, are the ones who are considering/using diesel generators and/or generic inverter/battery solutions. With our continuous innovation, our exclusive partnership with US-based solar panel manufacturer Solar Power Inc (whose panels are rated #1 in efficiency in the world by California Energy Commission, CEC), and our partnership with Clean Energy Development Bank of Nepal who is providing Nepal’s only 5-year solar loan without any collateral — we can guarantee you a solution that costs less than owning a diesel generator or running generic inverter/batteries. Not to mention that with diesel, you will still have to deal with numerous fuel crisis days, the price will go up over time, and you have to deal with the noise and the fumes adding more pollution to already polluted Kathmandu. Similarly, with generic inverter/battery, you are not adding any new energy to the system, instead you are further weakening our already over-stressed electricity grid by wasting over 60% of the electricity you pull out of the grid via your inefficient inverters to charge your batteries, which of course rarely last over 1 or 2 years.
Solar, on the other hand, is 100% clean and you are 100% independent of the utility grid. You can have your home and offices run their normal schedule without having to look at load-shedding schedule, and you also help address the national energy crisis by adding new energy sources to the system. Since the cost of solar is pro-rated over next 10 years, unlike diesel, your cost of energy will stay constant for the next 10 years, and after that you still have 15 years of warranty on your solar panels, meaning you get 15 more years of energy production more or less for free.
The thing to keep in mind is that if you wait till November to put your solar PV system, it may be a little too late. Because everyone else is trying to install their backup solutions at the same time, the demand will overshadow the supply, and hence the speed of installations may not be the same – especially for larger buildings and offices, where installation time can be 2 to 4 weeks.
Call us today at 4004545 or 4004550 (or email us at contact-at-ghampower-dot-com) to see how your business or home can benefit from solar and what is the true cost and benefits of owning solar. Our engineers and sales staff will be happy to do a free energy audit of your building and provide you a detailed analysis of your current energy usage pattern, how you can decrease it by adopting efficiency measures, and which solar PV system options are the best for your requirement. Even if you don’t install right away, at least you will be very clear about your options.
The fact remains, this winter there will be 16 hours of load-shedding beginning in November, and it is already the beginning of September. Will you be ready for it?
Not with the Generic inverters your argue is bad and then you use to convert solar DC to AC.
Rajesh ji – thanks for the feedback. Can you please enlighten us how our argument is bad? We’re interested to learn more of your perspective on this.
The generic inverter conversion efficiency a problem. Also, the generic inverter has been banned but Gham uses this and promotes.
Not good at all for solar.
Rajesh Ji
Your point is well taken, and we couldn’t agree with you more that “generic inverter efficiency” is the problem. The irony is that while *importing* generic inverter is banned by the government, manufacturers are still free to make them in Nepal (while they are allowed to import the same low-quality, low-efficiency parts which make generic inverters). So, the proliferation of low-efficiency inverters continues in the market, and the ban does nothing but help the local manufacturers get rid of competition, including companies like us who want to exclusively import high-efficiency inverters.
Here are some other aspects to consider as well:
* Prior to the government issuing a blanket ban on all inverters, we were importing high-quality, high-efficiency inverters that were rated at 90% efficiency, which I’m sure you’ll agree are much better than the generic inverters in the Nepali market. Once the government issued the inverter ban, we were left with no choice but to offer whatever was available locally so that we can at least continue with our installations.
* We, of course, protested against this ban saying that a blanket ban does not make sense. If loss of electricity due to bad conversion efficiency is the problem, then put a bank on low-efficiency inverters. The government can easily ask for CE or RoHS certification and ask that imported inverters must be certified by verifiable and reputable international standards to be above 85% or 90% efficient.
* With the help of SEMAN (organization representing solar companies in Nepal) pushing this issue, the government has recently made an exception for “solar inverters”. We are currently working under this provision to start re-issuing our high-quality inverters, and get away from our temporary use for generic inverters for our residential installations.
* We also want to clarify that our temporary use of generic inverters are only done for our installations smaller than 500-watt. For our larger installations (of 500-watt and above), we have exclusively used high-efficiency inverters, and will continue to do so. I fully agree with you that this does not excuse our use of generic inverters, but we had to opt for that just to be practical and at least have a solution for customers who want to install a solution today.
Thanks again for your feedback. I’d also love to hear your perspective on how we could have handled this better, and probably other alternatives we could have considered.
Sandeep