



Some days ago I had a chance to visit the Dam side of Kaligandaki hydro power project situated in Syanga district of Nepal. It is the biggest hydro power project of Nepal which has the capacity of producing maximum of 144 KW, especially during rainy seasons. The project which was build 11 years ago is still at good condition and functions well till date. Apart from producing electricity it has helped a lot of students to understand the physics behind producing electricity and we all were glad to observe how the electricity is produced.
The project utilizes the fast flow of the Kaligandaki river, which is one of the biggest river of Nepal. The project has got nine generators being operated. Talking about the environmental damage to the river and the near site, the engineers have carefully designed the project so that the impact to the natural setting of the environment is minimized to a great extent.
The dam of the project is around 5 kilometers and there as well the dam is created in such a way that the damage is minimum. There are four gates through which the water flows at a greater rate and most of the time all of them are not opened at once. The natural vegetation is kept as usual and other resources are not exploited there. Nepal being the second richest country in terms of water resources has not been able to utilize this resources to the fullest, specially the fast flowing rivers through which a lot of electricity can be generated. It is necessary to utilize these resources with over exploiting the natural resources along with other alternative resources so that we Nepalese should not suffer from long load shedding hours.
|