Civil Insight: A Technical Magazine Volume 2 | Page 97

CIVIL INSIGHT 2018
here in Nepal. At the same time, I was working as the
Managing Director of Chilime hydropower project. I
had a hectic schedule studying EMBA and managing
a project.
What I have learnt is that MBA provides the required
managerial skills and its implementation is an
important skill for an engineer to know.
Q. What were the challenges that you faced
in Chilime Hydropower Company and how
do you assess those challenges now?
When I started working at Chilime Hydropower,
there was a lot of confl ict raised by the public for
share due to which the project was interrupted and
kept lagging behind.So a provision of 10 % share
was made in the rules and policies of Nepal Rastriya
Bank along with the Ministry of Finance for the fi rst
time which like wise increased the public attachment
to the project.
Public relationship, attachment and participation in
any project is a key factor that holds its success, and
an engineer must hold the capability to maintain
these factors. During the construction of Chilime
Hydropower, local people were given opportunities
for jobs such as drivers or laborers which also helped
decrease foreign employment in that area. Rather
than opting for foreign employment, the local
people chose to work in that project being closer to
their families.Hence a good public attachment to the
project was built which benefi tted both the parties.
Due to the benefi ts from this project, 4 projects of
270 MW could be launched with local funding.
Every company should work for public benefi t,
hence establishing a harmonic environment. This
opens opportunities for many new projects.
People got employment, uplifted their life standards
and now Rasuwa is one of the economically
developed areas of Nepal. I also held awareness
programs for people about share and against its
misuse. This ensured the public attachment with me
as well as with the project. So, when I had to return
here, people from Rasuwa were against it and were
demanding me be present at the project site.
Q. Load shedding in Nepal was not due
to lack of power but due to leakage and
improper management. How did you
execute this?
INTERVIEW
97
The fi rst thing to consider is the integrity and ethics
in the part of management. The supply of electricity
should be the same for everyone regardless of
personal benefi ts one might receive.
The second consideration is management; supply
side as well as demand side management. Behavior
of the public on how they consume electricity is very
important to know. During the time of such crisis, we
eradicated load shedding in Kathmandu, and slowly
the plan of making other places also load shedding
free made a more positive impact to the people of all
other regions. When asked for their support for the
eradication of load shedding, the people positively
responded due to their increased emotional
attachment to the problem. Initially, people started
changing their consumption behavior during peak
hours which helped a lot in load management
and slowly, the use of inverters decreased which
drastically reduced the load consumption. Therefore,
the behavior of people using electricity changed and
hence all overload diminished.
Lastly technical expertise, management skills and
good leadership are needed to bring the required
change through proper execution.
Q. Besides ending load shedding, what other
visions does NEA plan on implementing
soon?
Now that load shedding has ended, our focus is in
maintaining it. There are three important factors
that should be considered, i.e. reliability, quality and
safety.
For reliable supply, the supply side must be strong,
for example, to supply 1500 MW, we need at least
20% reserve margin but right now we are in defi cit,
so we don’t have a reserve margin. Accordingly, we
are trying to increase generation and bring new
projects. In a period of 3 years, we are in the process
of bringing 3000 MW into our system. We are also
trying to construct 400 kV transmission lines East
to West and trying to make the transmission more
robust in order to decrease the losses and increase
their capacity.
For reliable distribution, the substation and
distribution cables capacity should be increased,
and a suitable system should be made available as
per the demand. Multiple network system should
be introduced rather than single system network.
We are also trying to introduce the smart grid