Bhutan Power Corporation

Bhutan Power Corporation Limited (BPC) is the national electricity utility of Bhutan, responsible for the transmission, distribution and supply of power across the country and for building the associated grid infrastructure. It is a portfolio company of Druk Holding and Investments (DHI), the commercial arm of the Royal Government, and is the link between Bhutan's hydropower generation and its domestic consumers.^[1]

Establishment

BPC was launched as a public utility company on 1 July 2002, created under the Electricity Act of 2001 through the separation and delinking of utility functions from the former Department of Power. The reform was intended to bring greater efficiency and improved service delivery through corporatisation. Ownership was later transferred to Druk Holding and Investments, which was established in 2007 to hold the government's commercial assets.^[1]

Role

While generation is handled largely by Druk Green Power Corporation, BPC operates the transmission and distribution network that carries electricity to households, institutions and industry, and has been central to Bhutan's drive toward near-universal rural electrification. In 2025 the corporation entered a partnership with the International Finance Corporation to strengthen reliability and modernise the grid.^[2]

Criticism and Public Debate

As the monopoly distributor of electricity, BPC sits at the centre of a recurring national argument over power tariffs. The corporation's periodic tariff applications to the Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA) pit its case for cost recovery — it cites network costs of Nu 3.26 (~USD 0.04) per unit — against the affordability of electricity for households, which is heavily subsidised. The argument sharpened in 2026, when the ERA approved a low-voltage tariff of Nu 5.63 (~USD 0.06) per unit for households and small businesses, against prevailing subsidised rates of Nu 1.28 to Nu 2.66 (~USD 0.015 to 0.03) per unit, with the first 100 units free for rural consumers. Public concern over the increase prompted Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay to direct the ERA to reconsider the proposal with affordability in mind, arguing that "the cost of building future projects cannot be billed to consumers right now". The government already covers roughly 45 per cent of the true low-voltage tariff through subsidy.^[3]

Service reliability is the other standing complaint. Residents of Thimphu neighbourhoods such as Zilukha and Babena have periodically endured weeks of erratic supply and low voltage — "Electricity is not reliable here, the power outage has been happening for past few weeks now," one resident told The Bhutanese during a spell of outages in late 2020 — with the corporation attributing interruptions to an ageing distribution network designed for far smaller loads than today's, and responding with transformer upgrades and automated distribution controls.^[4]

References

1. Bhutan Power Corporation Limited (official site).
2. "Bhutan Power Corporation Limited and IFC Partner to Strengthen Electricity Reliability and Modernize the Power Grid." International Finance Corporation, 2025.
3. "Govt asks ERA to relook at domestic power tariff, keeping affordability in mind." The Bhutanese, 2026.
4. "Frequent power outages leave residents in the capital frustrated." The Bhutanese, 28 November 2020.