DoED Licensing Directive 2075 — Hydropower Project Licensing

Summary

"विद्युत आयोजनाको अनुमतिपत्र सम्बन्धी निर्देशिका, २०७५" (Directive on Licensing of Electricity Projects, 2075 BS), issued by the Department of Electricity Development (DoED) in 2075 BS and now published by DoED as the fifth-amendment version.

Key provisions

• Q45 design discharge mandate: Projects must size their design discharge on Q45 exceedance ("Probability of Accident Q45 of Hydrological Time Series Data"). Earlier practices used Q40 or even Q25.
• Q80 exemption: Projects ≤1 MW for rural electrification may use Q80.
• Licence fee basis: DoED charges licence fees on Q45 basis but has allowed Q40 if a PPA is ultimately signed.
• Amended directive record: DoED's current public page identifies the directive as the fifth-amendment version, with fifth amendment date 2081/08/18.
• No climate adjustment requirement: DoED has not mandated climate-adjusted hydrological decrement factors in feasibility studies, despite draft ICIMOD guidelines.

Limitations

• Legal directive, not implementation record. The directive establishes licensing requirements; it does not show how consistently DoED applies them across individual projects.
• Hydrology rule specificity. The Q45 rule is explicit, but the source does not provide the hydrological datasets or statistical methods used by applicants.
• Climate-adjustment absence. The directive does not mandate climate-adjusted hydrology; that absence is a regulatory gap, not a quantified estimate of project risk.
• Amended text boundary. This source page now points to the current DoED publication page for the fifth-amendment version. Any claim about the original 2075 wording should be checked against the specific version cited.