Energy in Bhutan

[10][11][12] As Bhutan develops and modernizes, however, its domestic demand for energy in household, commercial, and industrial sectors has been steadily increasing.

Since 2006, the Electricity Authority has had the ability to impose differential tariff structures on low, medium, and high voltage consumers.

[1] It planned and built hydroelectric plants under a licensure scheme regulating the size and output of projects.

[17] Druk Green operates as a holding company to oversee and accelerate hydropower and alternative energy development.

[20] Both companies faced decreased profit margins largely because of losses due to increased energy price on repurchase from India.

Due to the vulnerability of the water supply amid climate change, the Bhutanese government began exploring alternative energies such as solar, wind, and biogas in the early 21st century.

[24] Climate change also poses risks to Bhutan as the country could suffer weather extremes causing more floods, intense monsoons, and glacier dam bursts in the summer and drought in the winter.

Many of the small and mini hydropower plants in Bhutan serve remote villages that remain disconnected from the power grid.

In the early 2010s, Bhutan began to shift its focus to public-private partnerships for future development,[32][33] however the process and requirements have operated to exclude many Bhutanese contracting firms.

During the summer, the plant generates 336 MW from four turbines off the flow of the Wangchhu river in central Chukha District, between Thimphu and Phuentsholing.

Tala has a generative capacity of 1,020 MW, sourced by some 40 kilometers of tunnel and a net drop of 860 meters in elevation.

[30][37] The Kurichhu facility consists of a dam, its 1 million cubic meter capacity cement reservoir, and four turbines.

The Basochhu power plants I and II, located near Wangdue Phodrang, were built with Austrian technical and financial assistance.

[1][51] The Bhutan Power Corporation provided solar electrification training for villagers from rural eastern areas of Bumthang, Lhuentse, Mongar, Pemagatshel, Samdrup Jongkhar, Sarpang, and Wangdue Phodrang Districts[52] Solar powered lighting is also available to many nomads living within protected areas of Bhutan.

[53] In order to shift household dependence on firewood, Bhutan began re-exploring biogas development from cow dung.

Bhutan had previously explored generating biogas in an identical fashion in the 1980s, but the program was abandoned after failures in training of masons and users, after-sales service, and site follow-up.

[28] Since the late twentieth century, hydroelectric power has been a very important aspect of Bhutan's economic development as a low-cost energy source supporting more capital-intensive industries, such as forestry, mining, and cement and calcium carbide production.

Bhutan's steep mountains, deep gorges, and fast-flowing rivers create abundant hydroelectric potential, which the government began to develop in the early 1960s with India's assistance.

[54] During Bhutan's Third Five-Year Plan, public works, still primarily roads, continued to take a significant share of the Nu475.2 million development budget (17.8 percent).

[54] The Sixth Five Year Plan (1987–92) was the first to allot power generation projects a significant portion of the national budget (13.1 percent).

The Nu2.44 billion Chukha project was 60 percent paid for by India and budgeted outside the normal development plan process.

The Chukha project was important not only because it supplied electric power to western and southern districts but also because it provided a major source of income for the government.

Because domestic consumption was low (just over 16 megawatts, more than 80 percent of which was consumed by industry), ample power was exported to India.

Smaller enterprises, such as the 1.5-megawatt Gyetsha Mini-Hydel, which was inaugurated in 1989, brought badly needed power to Bumthang.

[54] Other sources of energy included biogas, used in some districts for lighting and cooking and primarily generated from cow dung.

Solar energy was used for a variety of purposes, including heating dwellings and greenhouses and lighting hospitals.

Although Bhutan had greater access to electric power than they had previously, traditional methods of cooking and heating required readily available fuel.

In the mid-1980s, Bhutan produced a coal equivalent of 982,000 tons of wood for fuel per year to meet domestic needs.