On October 1, 2026, five listed hydropower companies answered SEBON’s flood-disclosure order with filings that turn the season’s floods from weather news into arithmetic. Suryakunda Hydro Electric (SKHEL), Mailung Khola Jal Vidhyut (MKJC), Mathillo Mailun Khola Jalvidhyut (MMKJL), Ghalemdi Hydro (GHL) and Sayapatri Hydropower (SPHL) published damage reports on NEPSE’s disclosure board the same day, the first wave of company-level filings under the regulator’s thirteen-point format ordered on October 1. Four of the five state their affected capacity, and together they account for 39.3 MW of generation now silent. The fifth, Sayapatri, reports its powerhouse filled with mud and generation fully stopped. What makes the filings worth reading carefully is the one number investors fear most: the gap between income lost and bills still due.
The pattern across the five letters is striking. In three cases the water never touched the plant. What failed was the grid around it.
The plants survived. The transmission did not
Suryakunda Hydro Electric, writing about its 11 MW Upper Tadi Khola project in Nuwakot, is explicit: the flash flood of August 26 (2083/05/10) caused no direct physical damage to the project’s main structures or equipment, a finding its technical team confirmed after inspecting the site. Generation has still been halted since August 27, because the same flood fully damaged NEA’s Trishuli 3B Hub Substation, through which the project evacuated its power. The letter, dated 2083/06/13, says plainly that producing power and feeding it into the national grid is currently impossible. Mathillo Mailun Khola Jalvidhyut, the 14.3 MW Sanima project in Rasuwa, tells the same story with more expensive detail: no direct damage to its powerhouse, tunnel or intake, but the entire Grid Connection Bay structure at the Trishuli-3B Hub Substation and transmission towers AP27 and AP28 were fully damaged, leaving the power station fully shut. Ghalemdi Hydro’s 9 MW project in Myagdi was knocked out by the Kaligandaki flood of September 27 (2083/06/11), which damaged towers of NEA’s Dana-Kushma 220 kV line. Three companies, three intact powerhouses, zero power flowing.
Suryakunda puts a rupee figure on the silence
Suryakunda is the only company of the five to quantify its loss in rupees, and the numbers deserve a slow read. The company estimates the income lost from generation that could not happen across Shrawan, Bhadra and until Ashoj 11 at Rs. 75,16,328.51, roughly Rs. 75.16 lakh, a preliminary figure it says is based on available generation and income records. Against that, the letter puts the coming first quarter’s estimated interest liability at Rs. 30,452,319.62, about Rs. 3.04 crore, which it says is all it can pay, plus an estimated principal installment of Rs. 12,965,437.77, about Rs. 1.30 crore. The interest bill alone is roughly four times the estimated income lost. The company adds that it is in talks with its lender banks and financial institutions about the principal and other loan obligations. It also discloses that the project is insured but no insurance claim has been filed, because there was no direct physical damage to the project’s own structures, and that no human loss occurred. For an investor, this is the anatomy of a stranded-asset quarter: revenue at zero through no fault of the plant, debt service continuing, and the restart date hostage to someone else’s substation.
Mailung Khola reports the worst physical damage and no restart date
Mailung Khola Jal Vidhyut filed the grimmest physical account. Its 5 MW Mailung Khola project in Rasuwa, the company says, has had 100 percent of its installed capacity affected by the Bhote Koshi and Rasuwa flood of August 26, with generation halted since that day. The damage list runs through generation structures, the powerhouse, the switchyard, residential buildings, the access road and transmission-related structures. Seven employees remain out of contact. The project is insured and the company says it has given preliminary information to the insurer, with a detailed technical assessment of the damage still underway. On the question every shareholder wants answered, when generation resumes, the letter is honest about what it does not know: with the access route damaged from the Betrawati side and the damage to structures extensive, no certain restart date can be given yet. No rupee loss figure is stated; the company says the real financial damage will only be fixed after the detailed technical and financial assessment is complete.
Seven months to rebuild a substation bay
Mathillo Mailun Khola gives the longest timeline of the five. Replacing the damaged transmission towers AP27 and AP28 and the Grid Connection Bay equipment will take about seven months, the letter says. Until then, the company writes, its full 14.3 MW of capacity is going to waste every hour. There was no human loss, the project is insured, and unlike Suryakunda the company says an insurance claim has been filed. Seven months is not a repair estimate for a damaged plant; it is the lead time for rebuilding grid infrastructure the company does not own. That distinction matters for how investors should read the recovery: the binding constraint is NEA’s rebuild schedule, not the company’s.
The late-September floods hit the west
The last two filings belong to a second, later flood pulse. Ghalemdi Hydro’s letter is brief: the September 27 Kaligandaki flood damaged the Dana-Kushma 220 kV towers, transmission from the 9 MW project was disrupted, and the project is fully shut. Sayapatri Hydropower’s letter, dated 2083/06/14, is a follow-up to its own earlier disclosure and reads like a damage report in two acts. The first act was the Darkhola flood of September 25, which damaged poles and wires of the 33 kV transmission line from the project switchyard to NEA’s Harichaur substation, stopping generation and transmission. The second came on September 27 at about 3:00 in the morning, when a mud and debris flow from roughly 700 meters above the powerhouse entered through the west-side glass windows and filled the powerhouse floor with mud, stopping generation fully. The company reports no human loss and no damage to the headworks, pipeline, powerhouse building or staff quarters, and says it will clear the mud and repair the 33 kV line as fast as possible. Neither company states a rupee figure.
What the filings still do not say
Read together, the five letters show SEBON’s thirteen-point format working as designed: project names, dates, capacity affected, human impact, insurance status and restart timelines are all on the page. What is missing is just as informative. Only one company has put a rupee number on its loss. Only one has given a rebuild timeline. Three are waiting on transmission infrastructure owned by someone else, which means their recovery forecasts are only as good as NEA’s. And the debt-service question Suryakunda surfaced, interest due while income is zero, is now on the table for every lender exposed to these projects, whether or not the other four have said it aloud. SEBON’s October 1 directive also ordered special trading surveillance on affected companies’ shares, so the market will be watching how these scrips trade against this new information. The list of affected companies is still growing; Daramkhola Hydro and others filed earlier notices, and more thirteen-point reports are presumably on their way. The honest state of play is the one the filings describe: dozens of megawatts silent, the bills still arriving, and the restart dates mostly unwritten.
This article is research and education, not investment advice. All figures are taken from the five companies’ official flood-damage letters published on NEPSE’s disclosure board on October 1, 2026 (letters dated 2083/06/13 and 2083/06/14); verify the source documents before acting.