In photos: The story of Nepal s first, and now nearly forgotten, hydropower project
By Ramesh Bhushal
On 22 May, 1911, at around 6.30 pm, the erstwhile King of Nepal Prithvi Bir Bikram Shah inaugurated Nepal’s first and South Asia’s second hydropower in Kathmandu by turning on the lights in Tudikhel located at the centre of the city. The Chandra Jyoti Electric Power station, named after the then Prime Minister Chandra Shumsher Rana, had an installed capacity of 500 kilowatts and took about four years and nearly one-million-days of work to complete. Built to light the palaces of the autocratic Rana rulers, the power station used water from two spring sources 12 kilometres south of Kathmandu.