Tengboche Hydro-Power System

With help of the American Himalayan Foundation, Tengboche Monastery has had electricity for many years. With the rapid deforestation in Tengboche, encouraging cooking on electric stoves is a good way of saving valuable wood. In addition, the monks appreciate the light, which enables them to study in the evenings.

The Tengboche turbine draws its water from the Kantega glacier, which is highly contaminated with very fine sediments. There is a sedimentation chamber, which fills very quickly, but the combination of fine sand and extremely cold water is very destructive to the turbine. By 1998 the Tengboche hydropower system was over ten years old and badly needed to be replaced. Originally designed to give an output of 20 MWH, now it only provided 5.5 kWh, hardly enough to run the Tengboche Water Pump. After negotiations between the Monastery, GTZ, the American Himalayan Foundation, ENTEC, Mr Bill Kite and with the help of Mr Brot Couburn, an agreement was reached to provide Tengboche with a new Turbine and to improve the present water intake.

The brand new turbine has now been installed. With the new facility, Tengboche has 30 kWh of continuous power and it is hoped that with this increased output electric water heaters can also be installed. This would help meet the unstoppable demand from tourists for hot showers without causing further deforestation.