The Bagmati State government has started the establishment of electric vehicle charging stations in the State. The government aims to replace fuel vehicles with electric vehicles from big cities of the state by 2085 BS, said Minister for Physical Infrastructure Development Rameshwor Phunyal. 

The electric transport system will be operated through the private partnership model for accessible, facilitated, safe and environment-friendly transport, he said. 

The Ministry has issued a notice asking the interested local levels to contact it within 15 days for the establishment of the charging centers. The policies and programmes presented by the government for the fiscal year, 2020/21 has prioritized renewal energy and the replacement of fuel vehicles with electric vehicles by 2085 BS. 

The government would operate electric vehicles soon, said the Minister. In the first phase, the route starts at Dhulikhel and goes through Banepa, Kathmandu, Dhading, Chitwan, Hetauda and Sindhuli. 

Source: RSS

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Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) Smart meter will be the biggest deployment use case of IoT/M2M in Nepal as of now. The implementation comes into effect as a part of a project called Kathmandu Valley Smart metering project (KVSM). Now, NEA will put a smart electricity meter for the new electrification request.

The smart meters enables real-time data monitoring of the energy usage at each offices or home. They can even connect or disconnect the electricity supply remotely. The smart meters are also called TOD meters (Time of Day). Which allows charging the electricity rate differently at different times. They can perform meter readings remotely without the need to send NEA employees to customers' homes. The data is collected to the central server of the system through GSM/GPRS connectivity. The Smart meters have an RF module to send the data to the server at regular intervals.

“The installation of the smart meter can improve efficiency and modernize the service provided by the state. This is a milestone towards meeting the government’s target to make prosperous Nepal and Happy Nepali,” said Minister Pun while addressing the program.

Minister Pun added that the NEA is working to beautify cities by installing an underground distribution system.

“As there will be post-paid and pre-paid options in the smart meter, the tariff can be paid as per the wishes of a consumer through an online bill,” said Kul Man Ghising, Managing Director of NEA.

Advantage of Smart Meters installation

-- Authority can cut the lines remotely of those consumers who do not pay tariffs on time 
--Leakage caused by the traditional meter readers can be manipulated
-- Electricty theft can be reduced drastically 
-- Consumer will get meter reading without human intervention (no need of meter readers)
--Better management of power outages by NEA

What is smart meter & how works?

Smart Meters are the electronic device that replaces the traditional meters for several utilities. They have an RF module inside the meters which sends the consumed unit information to the server on regular interval through several connectivity options like WiFi, non-cellular IoT and cellular connectivity (2G, 3G, & 4G, etc). 

After collecting data from customer meter data management software will analyze the data for several reports or predictions of the loads, customer consumption details on 24 hrs basis Using the 2G or 3G or 4G connectivity, the smart meter sends the usage units data to the server periodically.

Prepaid metering

The software needs to continuously monitor the energy consumption of the prepaid meter, also sending low credit notifications. Currently, they perform the billing of the most meters as post-paid where the meter readers visit customer premises for manual billing. Nowadays your home internet/mobile is working as a prepaid module.

As you noticed such SMS low credit notification from respective service providers. Customers can also view the consumption details including current and the historical data, either through a web portal or a mobile app. NEA can also deploy prepaid billing where the system reduces the available credit based on consumption. 

NEA has partnered with the government-owned telco, NTC (Nepal Telecom) to provide the SIM card for cellular data connectivity. 

 

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Though the Ministry of Education is preparing to incorporate alternative learning methods into the school curriculum, only 30 per cent of students are in access to information and technology means for the alternative learning devices in Bagmati State.

With the shutdown of schools, colleges and universities across the globe due to COVID-19 pandemic, most of the countries are adopting alternative e-learning via different electronic devices like radio, television, cell phones, laptops and many more.

Meantime, Nepal is exercising to run the same alternative mechanism to conduct teaching-learning activities but it has been tough due to poor access to internet and electronic devices to students.

The Bagmati State, with the federal capital, has also only limited access of 30 per cent students in it.   The State Education Directorate Director Chandra Prasad Luintel shared that only 12 students in a total of 600 students were reported having cell phones in some schools.

There are 35,601 schools across the country and the access of the students to the mobile phone is limited.  Though 75 per cent people have access to the internet, 85 per cent to radio and 72 per cent to television in the country, the access of the students to these devices is nominal. The number of cell phone users is 400 million in the country.

According to statistics, there are 5,243 community schools and 2,145 private schools in the State but most of them have no access to cell phones. Luintel added that self- reading materials were published and distributed to students from grade 1 to 8 in the State.

In a virtual programme organized by the Community Schools Management Committee Federation, Director Luintel, shared that poor connectivity and having no access of cell phones to students have created difficulties to run the classes; however, an alternative policy should be adopted between the students of having internet access and those not having internet access to continue the teaching-learning activities.

Issuing 'Student Learning Facilitation Guideline 2077 through Alternative System' on May 31, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology had asked the schools to implement it compulsorily from June 15 to give continuity to learning activities in an effective and systematic way through the alternative system.

Curriculum Development Centre has been doing homework to give recognition to such learning of the current academic session as per the guideline.  Students, guardians and students have not been found practical in such learning activities as learning through the alternative system has not got recognition so far while it has been suggested to allocate budget by local levels for free mobile set and internet facility to students having poor financial status.

The problem have been surfaced in the course of conducting online classes even in Kathmandu as most of the parents have no smartphone, laptop, computer, internet facility, disturbance of electricity. Schools have remained closed from March 24 due to lockdown imposed by the government.  

Educationist Dr Bidyanath Koirala said that question has been raised why to recruiting a large number of teachers at a time when there is the access of minimum students in an alternative system.  

Analyst Tika Bhattarai argued that mobilization of teachers for the continuity of learning activities during such difficult hour is very necessary. Federation Chair Krishna Thapa said schools could not be opened immediately during this difficult situation, saying local level and school management committee should be active to make the alternative teaching system effective.

Source:Prakash Silwal/RSS

 

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In fight against air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, the electrification of the transport sector is an important goal because widespread electrification would greatly improve the quality of the air we breathe. And in fact, switching to electric vehicles has also been a core target of the Ministry of Forests and Environment since 2015, in doing that Nepal has a comparative advantage in terms of production of its own hydroelectricity, a local energy resource, with a huge potential to replace imported fossil fuel in upcoming days resulting the energy security of country.

Also, EVs are the cleaner, greener, and quieter alternative money saving and cheaper in the long run and is dependent on domestic energy sources of Nepal.

Earlier days of EVs

Earlier policies and budgets tried to encourage the use of EVs with favourable tax policy, even though the lack of charging stations remained a major concern issues. While Introduction of policies favourable to battery powered vehicles have at least replace this incremental rate by EVs. Reduction in purchase and operation costs, charging duration could have created a huge acceptability of electric vehicles in Kathmandu Valley.

Similarly, construction of charging infrastructure around the valley could provide solution to worries of the general public while purchasing an EV. And a lot of investments were already done domestically as well as from FDIs to build these high power charging stations for long route EV travelling. We already have a history of electric public transportation like trolley bus and safa Tempo which are still in use till date inside Kathmandu valley in various major routes. But this is just in the past times before the new tax policy.

Current Days of EVs in Nepal

However the future of Electronic Vehicle now in Nepal seems to have unclear future, with the new tax policy introduced this fiscal year. The Nepal government’s decision in late May to hike taxes on electric vehicles is one of the most criticized decisions because the 2020-21 budget raised customs duty on electric vehicles to 40 percent, introduced excise duty ranging from 30 to 80 percent and kept VAT unchanged at 13 percent.

Previously, EVs only paid up to 10 percent customs and 13 percent VAT. Electric vehicles of peak power 50-100kW will now have to pay 40% excise, 50% if it is 100-150kW. The excise goes up to 60% for battery cars with peak power of 150-200kW. Because the EVs which would have cost 55 lakh before the new budget will now cost more than 1 crore 30 lakhs, this is an absurd situation for EV market in Nepal.

All the addition of tax on EVs now

Here is the example of tax calculation after the Budget 2020/021. Let us assume the price of an EV is Rs 55,00,000. Now, according to the new budget, the price will be subjected to 40% customs duty. After adding customs duty i.e. Rs 22, 00,000 new price will be = Rs 77,00,000. Now let’s assume the EV has a power ranging between (100-150Kw), then add the excise duty of 50% (Electric cars with peak power ranging between 50-100kW will bear an excise duty of 40%, 50% if it’s between 100-150kW, and 60% for 150-200kW).

The new price will be = Rs 1,15,50,000 (Rs 77,00,000 + 50% Excise duty i.e. Rs 38, 50,000).

Now the VAT is also there to be added  that is 13% VAT = Rs 1,30,51,500 (Rs 1,15,50,000 + 13% VAT i.e. Rs 15,01,500).

And here at the end comes 5% road toll which will depend upon every local level government policy  = Rs 1,37,04,075 (Rs 1,30,51,500 + 5% road toll i.e. Rs 6,52,575). 

The final price will be Rs 1,37,04,075 (excluding 20% dealer margin).

Result in reverse growth of Environment friendly, EVs in Nepal

Instead of having electronic vehicle friendly budget our country’s tax policy is actually going against the global trend. Electric vehicles are being imported by Renault, Mahindra, Kia, Hyundai, MG, Peugeot, Audi and BYD. Other importers which were also planning to add electric cars to their showrooms will now cancel their orders. These have made the EVs business intangible and risky for the dealers. As well as an impractical decision the consumers who earlier had made their mind to own electric vehicle in near future.

 

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