WECS River Basin Plans and Hydropower Development Master Plan (2024)
WECS's 2024 basin-planning source for discharge, seasonality and hydropower-resource context.
- Page status
- Verified core
- Updated
- 2026-05-11
- Last reviewed
- 2026-07-19
- Review due
- 2027-01-19
Summary
The 2024 master planning document for Nepal's river basins. Provides basin-level discharge data, seasonal flow profiles, hydropower potential assessments, and strategic planning frameworks. This is the most authoritative recent basin-level reference.
Key Data Points
- Koshi Basin: 27,818 km² in Nepal; 1,826.5 cumec average border flow; dry-season flows reduce to ~10x lower than peak
- Gandaki Basin: 32,148 km² in Nepal; 1,952.3 cumec average border flow; ~80% of rainfall in four wet-season months
- Karnali Basin: 43,153 km² in Nepal; 1,255.9 cumec average border flow; highest hydropower potential per WECS
- 75% or more of river flow occurs in the wet season (June–September)
- Storage and multipurpose projects treated as central to moving value from surplus to deficit basins
- Babai explicitly described as rain-fed; West Rapti, Kamala, Kankai as water-deficit / dry-season constrained
Relevance to Project
Foundation for the hydrology evidence base. Provides the basin-level evidence for Seasonal Mismatch and Nepal's Core Hydro Problem Is Timing, Not Annual Volume.
Limitations
- Model-derived, not measured. Basin flow numbers are MIKE SHE / MIKE Hydro Basin model outputs, not DHM gauge observations. Values may differ from project-specific hydrological studies.
- Single planning document. The master plan represents WECS's planning framework at a point in time; it does not reflect subsequent basin-level developments, project-specific feasibility studies, or post-2024 hydrological events.
- Dry-season flow estimates are model projections. The ~10x wet-to-dry flow reduction cited for Koshi is a model estimate, not a multi-decadal gauge average. Interannual variability may be wider than implied.