Publications

Electric utilities and transmission companies face variability and uncertainty in power demand and supply owing to several uncontrollable factors, which include sudden fluctuations in peak load and unexpected generation and transmission outages. Weather, in itself, is a major driver of power demand, where prolonged and/ or extreme weather events impact power demand and operation in generation. Variable energy generation introduces new sources of variability and uncertainty. This makes forecasting of variable energy all the more important. As wind and solar penetration levels increase, forecasting forms a critical component of operations.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was created on 8th December 1985. Presently, the South Asian region consists of eight member countries – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It also has nine observer countries – Australia, China, EU, Iran, Japan, Mauritius, Myanmar, Republic of Korea, and the USA. For the study in this report, only member countries have been considered as the focus area.

SAARC is a pool of countries, ranking in population from among the smallest (Maldives) to one of the largest (India) in the world. The region has a high population density, with 22% of world’s population occupying only 4% of the world’s land mass and relatively high levels of poverty.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Member Nations, comprise of some of the fastest growing economies in the world, with a cumulative GDP growth of 4.8% (The World Bank, 2020). The geographical size of SAARC Nations is just 3% of the world’s area however they comprise 21% of the world’s population and 4.21% of world economy (World Economic Outlook Database, 2020). With increasing economic activities in the region, the per capita electricity consumption of these countries is increasing at rapid rate.

SAARC Countries are adversely affected by energy inefficiency and reliability issues in their power generation and distribution sectors. The electrification rates vary among the SAARC nations - Afghanistan 30%, Bangladesh 64%, Bhutan 100% and Maldives 93% (SAARC Energy Centre, 2017) - thus highlighting these nations have highly contrasting economic and power sector profiles. Further, Bhutan and Nepal meet much of their electricity demands by hydro power; the remaining 6 nations are highly dependent on fossil fuel imports for their electricity generation.

The overall objective of this study is to increase the deployment of the renewable energy technologies in SAARC Member States through the use of NEM mechanisms. The study will assess and provide solutions to all technical and financial challenges faced by the Distribution Utilities while implementing NEM technology. The aim is to facilitate the distribution utilities for speedy adoption of NEM mechanisms.

The purpose of this study is to identify important challenges for the utilities that may be reducing the speed of adoption of NEM in SAARC Member States, and suggest measures which could mitigate such challenges and rapidly increase penetration of NEM