Densification of existing Electric Grid

GIZ/EnDev Nepal promotes sustainable access to modern energy services for households, social institutions and small to medium-sized enterprises. Under the developed partnership with NEA/CRED, the overall aim is to provide sustainable access to modern electricity services for rural households. Our work started with the extension of the national grid, which has reached 59 CREEs country wide with the establishment of a fund that enable CREEs to have the funds for grid extensions in their operation areas. Since 2008 more than 260,000 people have benefited from this fund and proved to be pertinent and effective for many CREEs country wide. Despite this success, during this year’s CREEs have also observed that still many households are not connected to the national grid mainly due to the high initial connection investment costs. Thus, the present Densification Program deals with this issue by providing an incentive to those CREEs that can finally enable more users with effective access to the grid while at the same time promoting Productive uses of Electricity in their operation areas. This initiative also ensures “leave no one behind” policy of EnDev for modern energy access as most of the users targeted are poor/marginalized and disaster affected households.

Objective of the program

The CREEs Densification Program has the objective to support with connection incentives to CREEs that identify and effectively connect to the Electricity Grid users under their existing areas of operation who could not get access due to the high initial connection costs. These incentives could be later translated to households or small and micro enterprises with new connections.

Role and Responsibilities under Grid Extension

To steer the revolving fund, EnDev provides technical assistance to NACEUN for the operationalization of the revolving fund with the development of loan allocation and collection mechanisms, capacity building activities of CREEs. Technical trainings and admin-financial training, organizational management trainings are provided to CREEs that manage electricity distribution within the community to operate as an independent rural utility. In this regard, required guidelines and manuals are also developed.

Targets

The Programme focuses on rural and peri-urban areas where CREE program is implemented. Only new connections will be considered and only in those areas that have already been electrified. New connection derived from new grid extensions cannot participate in the actual call.
In the case of PU, new connections will be via new businesses (MSMEs) using electricity for income generation. Non new connections will be supported outside the CREE area.
Provide electricity access for lighting/electrical appliances to 16,200 persons.
Provide electricity access to 50 social infrastructure institutions.
Provide electricity access to 490 MSMEs.