Sanjen Hydropower Project starts commercial production

Kathmandu, December 17 — The electricity generated from Sanjen Hydropower Project has been commercially fed to the national grid. The 42.5MW capacity Sanjen Project is developed by Sanjen Hydroelectric Company Limited, a subsidiary of Chilime Hydropower Company Limited.

The Project is located at Aama Chhodingmo-5 in Rasuwa district. The power from the Project has been transmitted to the National Grid from Monday evening after completing all the technical and associated tests.

The Project had been continuing test production from its first unit since November 23. Project Sub-Engineer Rabin Koirala said that the electricity produced by the Project has been commercially made available to the National Transmission Line since Monday.

Sanjen (Upper) Hydropower Project, one of the two semi-reservoir type projects constructed as per the 'cascade model', had been supplying electricity to the National Grid from October 8, 2023. It had been supplying power on commercial basis through the 11-kV emergency transmission line.

The Company itself had constructed an eight kilometres long 11 kV double-circuit transmission line and a 132/11 kV sun-station for this purpose. It had been selling around 8.5 MW power as an alternative way via the Trishuli 66-kV Transmission Line due to capacity constraint.

The Project Office stated that construction of both Sanjen and Sanjen (Upper) projects could not be completed within the deadline due to the Gorkha Earthquake in 2015, the COVID-19 pandemic, the blocade and unavailability of the National Transmission Line, among other problems.

The Company said that it has been successful to generate electricity from these two projects and supply power to the National Grid with the recent completion of the construction of the Chilime-Trishuli 220 kV Transmission Line.

It said Sanjen is a 'model project' among the semi-reservoir type projects constructed in the country. It is believed that the commercial power production by Sanjen Hydropower Project will help address to some extent the 'power supply system imbalance' that occurs during the winter months when there is high demand for electricity.

According to the company, Sanjen is a model project among semi-reservoir projects under construction in Nepal. About A 'picking pond' has been constructed that can easily power the national electricity system for 70 minutes by collecting 44,000 cubic meters of water.

Among the cascade projects in Nepal, Sanjen is the first project in Nepal where the lower project can continuously generate electricity even when the upper project is being maintained by installing special technology.

This technology, which was installed for the first time as a model technology in Nepal, can be installed by other cascade projects in the future and the dependence of the lower project of the cascade on the upper project can be reduced.

Due to a kind of state-of-the-art technology equipment manufactured in Germany, the company will get great financial relief by stopping the damage caused by the project maintenance time, the Company stated.