Yakh-Chiew Micro Hydro

Power (100 kW)

Ahmad Rasooli

1. Name of the project

Yakh-Cheiw micro Hydro Power

2. Location and site details, population covered

Yakh-Chiew village, and 6 other villages in Shuhada district of Badakhshan
Province.
Project size: 100kW, Population Covered 1000 household, equal to 7,500
individuals.

3. Year of commissioning
Start Date: 2010, End date: 2013

4. Baseline energy consumption pattern and load description

No data available, at the planning time, calculations made based on number
of household and the scope of the micro hydro project was just for evening
lighting.

5. Technical design of the plant with details of equipment used

Refer to appendix I , the attached design is typical design, details may differ
from what you see in drawings, but the principle is the same.

6. Funding arrangements and Tariff estimation including willingness/

ability to pay, if possible, total cost of the project
Refer to appendix II for budget break down and actual cost of the project,
there is No tariff estimation.
As a general observation that can be applied to this project also, the
sustainable rural electrification projects, normally charge their customers in
average 50 Afs per 18W CFL lamps per month, for 12 hours daily, from 5 PM
to 5 AM, this mean 7.71 Afs/kWh. (with no metering)
reports shown variation of this figure from 40 Afs/ bulb up to 100 Afs.(6.17
Afs/kWh to 15.4 Afs/kWh), that is higher than DABS tariffs, DABS tariffs are
started from 2.5 Afs/kWh and goes up to 10 Afs/kWh.

7. O&M processes
During establishment of Energy for Rural Development in Afghanistan, ERDA,
as component of National Area Based Development Program, NABDP, it was
purposed to make some sub comities under CDC under name of ENERGY
WORKING GROUPS, to take care of financial and technical management of the
project. The first interventions in Badakshan province done according to the
ERDA project implementation guideline. Later on as described under lessons
learned, due to lake of tariff system and legal frame work gaps, this approach

PAGE 1

marked as not applicable, ERDA tried another approach, pushing the elecromechanical service provider to train two person in site to take care of the
project, not just for this case, in most of the cases, after completion of the
project CDC fired trained guys and hire someone else. ERDA failed to enforce
its rules for hiring and firing the project operators. No legal instrument has
developed yet.
As a general observation, after a period, CDC learned how to manage the
project financially and technically, beside failure samples, there is lots of
success stories. This project is still working.

8. Lessons:
Procurement process and management system has key rule in project
success. In this case managing the allocated fund was very difficult, the first
approach was contracting with 7 CDC as implementer, technical ambiguity
and the need for one responsible firm, made NABDP to check another
solution, allowing CDC to hire a company for project construction. This
approach made construction management easier but made some other
problems:
Companys agreement with CDC was based on Afghani currency and MRRD
contract with CDC was based on USD, the exchange rate during construction
period dropped from 50 Afs/USD to 47 Afs/USD, this issue led CDC toward
more liabilities, the case is not resolved yet.
Contract documents had no clauses for tariff arrangements, technical design
had no option for power consumption metering and limitation, this led project
to some damages before officially being hand-over. Implementer company
burned the cost of transformer replacement. Installation of meters and
setting up the tariff rate by CDC changed the consumption pattern.
This issue, is now going to be addressed by some initiatives taken by MEW,
they are working on setting up a tariff frame work for whole country. Power
Service Regulation Act, legislated all interventions for electrification project.
As this initiative is new, still experiments needed to make sure legal
framework can govern the interventions successfully.

Annex III
ERDA project implementation guideline:
Annex IV

PAGE 2

O&M guideline

PAGE 3