Nepal floods damage 360 MW of hydro capacity, country may turn to India for power

Nepal could turn to India to make up for electricity shortfalls after this week's flash floods damaged several of its hydropower plants, wiping out close to 8% of the country's total generation capacity, according to a Bloomberg report citing the country's energy ministry.

The floods, triggered by a collapsing glacier in the Himalayan region straddling Nepal and Tibet, damaged close to 360 megawatts of capacity, most of it hydropower, energy ministry spokesperson Shaligram Bhandari told Bloomberg.

Also read: Nepal floods: MEA says 200 Indians stranded on Chinese side, 288 uncontactable


A 25-megawatt solar plant and five under-construction projects with a combined capacity of 390 megawatts were also affected, he said. Hydropower makes up over 90% of Nepal's roughly 4,300 megawatts of total generation capacity, per the report.

Nepal typically exports hydropower to India through the summer months and imports power in winter, when its rivers freeze and generation drops. Last year, Nepal supplied 600 megawatts of round-the-clock hydropower to India over the six months to November, and had planned to export another 500 megawatts this year.

Nine operational hydro projects across two districts were damaged in the floods, according to a statement from Nepal's energy ministry cited in the report. Repair crews are working to restore supply, but Nepal may need to lean on India to bridge the gap in the meantime, Bhandari said.

Death toll, missing count climbs

The disaster struck Wednesday after a glacier collapsed in the Himalayas, sending a surge of ice, rock and water down the Lhende Khola river system into Nepal's Rasuwa district and Tibet's Gyirong county on the China side. The floods tore through villages, swept away roads, bridges and buildings, and have killed at least 270 people.

More than 1,300 people remain missing across Nepal and Tibet, according to Bloomberg, a figure that includes both foreign travellers and Nepali nationals still unaccounted for.

Among those missing are Indian nationals, including pilgrims who were on the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra. India's Ministry of External Affairs said earlier this week that 200 Indian nationals were stranded on the Chinese side of the border and 288 were uncontactable, while 21 people from Tamil Nadu had been rescued.

Also read: Nepal Flash Flood latest news updates: Death toll climbs to 270, more than 1200 missing; India on alert

New Delhi has said it is sending relief supplies to Nepal at the country's request and will continue to extend support as the situation develops.

Renewed scrutiny of Himalayan hydropower

The disaster has reignited concerns about hydropower development in the ecologically fragile Himalayan region. While the mountains' snow-fed rivers hold significant potential for carbon-free power generation, the rapid expansion of large dam projects has left them more exposed to extreme weather events, Bloomberg reported.

Nepal's Rasuwa district, the worst-hit area in this week's floods, suffered a smaller but similar disaster last year, Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of the New Delhi-based South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People. Thakkar called for a thorough, science-based evaluation of risks before greenlighting future hydropower projects in the region.

With inputs from Bloomberg