The government is planning to commission at least four hydro-power projects fully or partially this year, especially in the northeast region, which has over 40 percent of India’s stalled projects, a senior power ministry official told BloombergQuint.
The first station of Tuirial hydro-power plant, a greenfield project owned by the North Eastern Electric Power Corp. Ltd. (NEEPCO) on the Tuirial river, was commissioned in Mizoram last fortnight.
“Out of the 60-MW capacity, 30 MW has been commissioned and we are hopeful of commissioning remaining 30 MW by this year end,” the official said requesting anonymity.
The Tuirial project was conceptualized in 1998 but faced many hurdles because farmers launched protests against the submerging of their farmlands and standing crops due to the reservoir.
After commissioning this project, Mizoram will be the third power surplus state in the northeast region. The official pointed out that the northeast region has the maximum number of stalled hydro-power projects in the country, 60 GW of the total 145 GW.
“Of this 60 GW projects in the North East, 50 GW stalled hydropower projects are in Arunachal Pradesh alone,” the official added.
Tuirial project is to be funded from equity from government, loan from a domestic financial institution, sub-ordinate loan to be granted by the government and grant from DoNER (Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region).
Apart from this project, the 330-MW Kishanganga project in Jammu and Kashmir, 110-MW Pare hydropower project in Arunachal Pradesh, and the first unit of 600-MW Kameng project, also in Arunachal, will be commissioned this year, said another official from the power ministry.
Last year, the power ministry had commissioned 1,659-MW hydro power, and the target for this year is commissioning 1,305 MW hydro power. Of this, 266 MW has been commissioned till date.
The government is also planning to start Arun-III hydro-power project in Nepal by December. The Union Cabinet had approved the 900-MW project at a cost of Rs 5,723.72 crore earlier this year.
Source: bloombergquint.com
