Shimla, December 25
It has been a bleak year for the power sector in the hill state as the reforms took a back seat and the 1500 MW Nathpa Jhakri project, the country’s largest hydroelectric venture, ran into rough weather within days of its inauguration by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, on May 28.
Engineers of the Sutlej Jal Vidyut Nigam (SJVN) had no answer to the problem of excessive silt which forced repeated shutdown of the project during peak generation season. The project survived unprecedented floods caused due to bursting of the Parechu lake in Tibet on June 26. However, disaster struck on September 4 when the underground powerhouse was submerged due to bursting of labyrinth pipe of one of the six generating units. It took 45 days to resume generation and by that time discharge in the river had dwindled as a result of which only two units could be made functional.
There was huge shortfall in generation as the project remained shut down for 60 days and operated much below capacity during the entire monsoon. As against the targeted 6950 million units only about 4,500 million units of power will be generated during the year. The loss of revenue on this account comes to Rs 650 crore.
The high silt content during monsoon, which is the peak generation season, has made it evident that run-of-the-river projects on the highly turbulent Sutlej are not feasible. The Forum of Power Developers of Sutlej Basin has urged the state government to formulate a comprehensive project for the ecological rehabilitation of the degraded catchment of the river and ensure construction of at least four storage projects upstream the Nathpa-Jhakri project.
The State Electricity Board and the Electricity Regulatory Commission remained locked in legal battles and process of reforms was virtually stalled. The board challenged most of the important directions of the commission in the high court, which stayed the orders. The board failed to complete the controversial Larji project, which already is behind schedule by two years. With construction cost of over Rs 11 crore per megawatt, more than double the normal cost, it will be the most expensive hydroelectric project of the country when completed next year. Taking a serious notice of the huge cost and time overruns the state Electricity Regulatory commission ordered an inquiry into the alleged irregularities in the execution of the project. The board moved the high court against the decision which granted a order stay. However, the Supreme Court vacated the stay early this month.
The state government came out with a power policy to ensure expeditious exploitation of the hydroelectric potential under which projects from 5 MW to 100 MW through the MoU (memorandum of understanding) route. Projects with generation capacity exceeding 100 MW will be assigned to private sector through global bids. The Sutlej Jal Vidyut Nigam, which is a joint venture of the Centre and Himachal government, has taken up three projects in the neighbouring state of Uttaranchal.. The 300 MW Dev Sari Dam project on the Birahi Ganga in the Chamoli district is the biggest of the three projects. The other two projects are the 35 MW Jakhol Snakari on river Supin and the 33 MW Devra Mori on river Tons.
