Cabinet to take up new hydro power policy soon: Shinde

The revised hydel policy has been formulated after a long process of discussion with various stakeholders and is aimed at ensuring that more private sector investments, along with public sector investments, are roped in to the sector.

Shinde said that India had a total hydro power potential that was estimated to be around 1,50,000 mw, with most this potential being in the Himalayan region in states such as Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. He however said that only a fraction of this potential has been harnessed so far.

It needs to be mentioned that over the next few years, the government is going to push for large hydel power projects as even the ultra mega power projects are only based on coal. After the bidding process for the first two ultra mega power projects was completed last week, the government today offered the letter of intent for the 4000 mw Sasan mega power project in Madhya Pradesh to Lanco Infratech while the LoI for the 4000 mw Mundra project based on imported coal was handed to Tata Power.

Lanco, along with its Singapore-based joint venture partner Globoleq quoted a tariff of Rs 1.196/ unit for the Sasan project. This project is likely to achieve financial closure by December 2007 and the first unit would start generation by 2011-12. The Lanco group is also talking to China8217;s Dongfang Electric for procuring equipment the special super critical technology for the project. Tata Power, for their Mundra project, quoted a tariff of Rs 2.26 /unit and this project is also expected to start by 2011-12.