NEA to lay cables underground without digging roads

Kathmandu, Oct. 15:

Quite unlike the time when the pipeline for the Melamchi Water Supply Project was being laid, the people in Kathmandu will experience no inconveniences of dust and traffic disruption when the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) does the same with its cables.

The NEA is to lay its cables underground using a method that does not require digging and damaging the road surface.

Such a method of installing underground pipelines and cables without digging a trench is called Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD).

“A small pilot hole will be dug at a distance of every 200 metres, and a drill pipe will grind the soil up to the next hole,” said Manoj Silwal, chief of the Project Management Directorate at the NEA.

He said that as all the cable laying works would be done using this new technology, introduced for the first time in the country, there would be fewer disturbances on traffic management, and pollution would be controlled.

The holes will be blacktopped instantly.

The HDD technology has three steps – pilot hole, pre-reaming and pipe pullback where the activities of drilling, enlarging the hole to the required size and installing the cables are done respectively.

Silwal said that in the first phase, the cables would be sent underground at the major thoroughfares in the Kathmandu Valley.

The state-owned electricity monopoly is installing underground electricity cables of about 200 kilometres in length in parts of the Kathmandu Valley that come under its Maharajgunj and Ratnapark Distribution Centres.

Along with the electricity cables, fibre optics cable will also be laid simultaneously.

This time, there is going to be great relief for the Department of Roads (DoR), a government agency with the responsibility of constructing and maintaining the major roads.

Joint spokesperson at the DoR Ramesh Kumar Singh said that there used to be a problem every time a water pipeline, telecom cable or sewerage pipe was laid as the construction always damaged the roads. But applying the new technology while laying the electricity cables will not demand any action from the DoR.

The US$ 50 million project also includes distribution automation, said Silwal.

The project is a component of the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-supported $180 million Power Transmission and Distribution Efficiency Enhancement Project (PTDEEP), and aims at increasing the reliability and capacity of distribution networks and automating them.

The NEA in July had called for tenders for international competitive bidding to lay underground cables in areas covered by the Maharajgunj Distribution Centre, in accordance with the ADB procurement guidelines.

According to Silwal, the NEA will issue a tender notice on Monday for laying the underground cables in areas falling under the Ratnapark Distribution Centre.

The project will be completed in two-and-a-half years.

After laying the cable undergrounding in the Kathmandu Valley, the project will be expanded to the metropolises and sub-metropolises outside the valley, he said.