Biraj Gautam and Rabin Shrestha share their lessons from the latest visits to the micro hydro power sites in Jumla and Baglung.
Workshop: Knowledge Sharing Between Micro-Hydro Practitioners
One of our most recent SEPS Exchange Activities in Nepal aims to expand the knowledge base among technically sound but managerially and financially weak micro-hydro plants to ensure their sustainable commercial operation.
In Nepal, micro-hydro power generation is already widespread. Nevertheless, challenges such as poor management, weak technical skills and poor financial operation prevent community-owned micro-hydro plants (MHPs) from making a lasting impact on people’s livelihoods.
Our project partners at WINROCK have recently organised a knowledge-sharing workshop between the owners and operators of five malfunctioning and three successfully operating MHPs in Nepal.
Specific objectives of the workshop included:
- To survey current managerial issues and challenges faced by MHPs and to establish informal relationships among MHP user committee members to assess contributing factors
- To share findings of a baseline study with the participants
- To share MHP success stories and best practices to resolve management issues
- To carry out field visits at successfully operating MHPs
- The development by each MHP of an action plan to improve their performance
The participants gained a lot of knowledge from each other and will apply this to their MHP operations in the coming months.
More general information is available on our SEPS project page: Sharing Learning Across Projects: Operating Micro Hydro Plants (MHP) as Commercially Viable Enterprises
