[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

dam-l LS: World's Biggest Hydro for NE India?

from http://www.rediff.com/business/2000/jan/07ne.htm

Arunachal to get world's biggest power project

                         Nitin Gogoi in Guwahati

Survey work on the Dihang and Subansiri hydro-electrical power project --
believed to be the world's biggest with a capacity to generate 21,000 
mega-watts of electricity --
in the upper reaches of Arunachal Pradesh bordering China has 
commenced, India's Power
Minister PR Kumaramangalam announced here on Thursday.

The US $ 200 billion project is expected to generate electricity from 
2008. Once this project
goes on stream, power shortage in the north-east will be a thing of the past.

Indeed, the north-east will be able to export power to neighbouring 
countries like Myanmar and
Bangladesh, the power minister said.

Work on a detailed project report has already commenced, he added.

Kumaramangalam, along with his minister for state, Jayawanti Mehta, 
was in Guwahati to
participate in the fourth meeting of the north-east power ministers.

The initial work on the Dihang-Subansiri project (both rivers 
originate in China before entering
India in Arunachal Pradesh and joining up with the Brahmaputra) will 
be done by the
Shillong-based public sector North East Electric Power Corporation. 
NEEPCO has at least
three decades of experience in doing such projects.

At a later stage, a special purpose vehicle may be created to forge a 
strategic alliance between
public and private sector power companies, top officials say.

"The Centre could set up a separate authority to be called the 
Brahmaputra Hydro Development
Corporation to run the massive project," a top official told this 
correspondent.

The latest move by the power ministry to give expeditious clearance 
to the Dihang Subansiri
project comes in the wake of a recent policy decision to concentrate 
on generating more hydro
power. "The share of hydro-power has been continuously declining over 
the past three decades.
Against the ideal hydel-thermal mix of 40:60, the share has gone down 
from 44 per cent in
1970 to 25 per cent in 1999," a top power ministry official pointed out.

It is in keeping with this concern that the power ministry has begun 
giving emphasis on
hydropower development, he said.

Apart from clearing the Dihang-Subansiri project, several important 
decisions on new and
ongoing projects were taken during the day-long meeting. Smaller 
power projects in various
states across the north-east have been identified. They are: Tuival 
(Mizoram-210 MW),
Kameng (Arunachal Pradesh-600 MW) and Tipaimukh (Manipur-1500 MW).

These are in addition to several ongoing projects like Kopili (Assam) 
stage II (25 MW); Tuirial
(Mizoram-60 MW); Loktak downstream (Manipur-90 MW), Ranganadi (Arunachal
Pradesh-405 MW), Doyang (Nagaland -75 MW) and Teesta V (Sikkim-510 
MW). When all
these projects go on stream by 2006, they would add an additional 
generating capacity of over
1,000 MW.

Kumaramangalam, however, admitted that just generating more power 
will not be sufficient.
"We need to upgrade our transmission systems to match the additional 
generation capacity," he
said. The minister was only articulating what has been the planners' 
nightmare for years now.

NEEPCO, for instance, produces more power than required by the seven 
states. But in the
absence of concurrent progress in building compatible transmission 
lines, it is neither able to
feed the remote areas of the region nor evacuate the power outside 
the north-east.

As NEEPCO's chairman and managing director, PK Katoky, told this 
correspondent: "At the
moment our problem is not lack of power but absence of a proper 
infrastructure to evacuate the
power. While we have been able to keep pace with the rising demands 
of power requirement,
the transmission lines have not been upgraded to the required 
standards, thereby creating a
piquant situation."

The seven states of the north-east require 800 MW of power during the 
peak period (4 to 10
pm) but during the rest of the day, the power requirement is as low 
as 250 MW. At the moment,
NEEPCO's installed capacity is 625 MW while the state electricity 
boards chip in with the rest
of the 800 MW requirement.

The problem that NEEPCO faces is evacuation of excess power during 
the off-peak period.
Apparently, power produced by NEEPCO requires 220 KV transformers for 
transmission. But
in the entire north-east, the lines connected to 220 kV transformers 
are at best capable of
transmitting only 400 MW of power. Rest of the lines are connected to 
132 KV transformers.
The result: nearly 400 MW of power that the region is capable of 
producing, cannot be used.

In this context, Kumaramangalam has advised the Power Grid 
Corporation -- entrusted with
building high power transmission lines -- to speed up its work in the 
region. It remains to be
seen whether it can match the speed with which the region is building 
additional generating
capacity.