Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Ltd, a joint venture between the Centre and Himachal Pradesh government, has made significant progress on its various projects in Uttarakhand. These form part of the company's capacity addition programme in the 12th Plan period.
SJVNL officials told Projectmonitor that the detailed project report for the 252-mw Devsari project in Tharali tehsil of Chamoli district, prepared by Swiss consultancy Colenco Engineering, had been submitted to Central Electricity Authority for techno-economic clearance on January 14. While the clearance is expected in three-four months, SJVNL has already initiated work on land acquisition and securing environmental clearance. The project was earlier conceived as a 300-mw storage project, but was later converted into a run-of-river scheme to obviate the submergence of 520 hectares of populated land. “In the revised scheme, the height of the dam would be restricted to a maximum of 35m,” officials said.
Meanwhile, SJVNL has also initiated the process of pre-qualifying construction contractors for the 56-mw Naitwar Mori project. To be built on the Tons river, a tributary of the Yamuna, the project will have a 30.5m high barrage, diversion channel, twin desilting chambers of 130m length, a headrace tunnel almost 4.3km long, and a tailrace channel.
On the other hand, SJVNL officials also indicated that work on the smaller 35-mw Jakhol Shankari project was progressing slowly. As part of the project area fell in a sanctuary park, the forest clearance was not forthcoming, officials said.
In a positive development, SJVNL recently signed the revised MoU for the 776-mw Luhri project in Himachal Pradesh, while that of the 1,020-mw Khab project was in progress, officials said. Some units of these two projects (both harnessing the Satluj river) are expected to commission in the 11th Plan period. Opposition from local population has been affecting work on the Khab project, it is learnt. SJVNL's biggest capacity addition in the ongoing plan period will come from the 412-mw Rampur hydropower project, costing Rs 2,047 crore, that is based on the desilted outflow of the company's 1,500-mw Nathpa Jhakri project.
For 2008-09, SJVNL has targeted to generate 6,600 million kwh of electricity from its 1,500-mw Nathpa Jhakri project, against 6,450 million kwh in 2007-08 and 5,941 million kwh in 2006-07. Commissioned in May 2005, the 6x250-mw Nathpa Jhakri is today India's biggest hydropower project in operation.
Source : www.projectsmonitor.com
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