Darkness beneath the wick

The state ofJ&K is one of the richest states in India in terms of its estimated hydelpower capacity. The recent surveys have placed the hydel potential of statearound 20,000 MW, which should be enough to cater the energy demands of mostpart of northern belt of India. But the ill fact remains that state has tillnow just exploited around 20% of its estimated potential , with the result thatstate is unable to cater to its own peak demand, leave apart exporting energyto the rest of the country. It is true that national companies like NHPC do exportenergy from its plants situated in valley, but the nature and context of thisexport is different and has no significant telling upon the energy status ofthe state. The brute fact remains that during winters when demand touchesmaxima and because of lean discharge, production reaches minima, the state hasto face worst form of load shedding, besides purchasing energy from nationalcompanies, which has huge telling upon the economy of the state. According toofficial figures, the government is currently spending Rs 21.07 crore per dayon power purchase  from power corporations to meet the power requirementof the state. This lack of exploitation of hydel potential of the state hasaffected not only the energy scenario of the state, but has its consequences onnational energy scenario as well. As an illustrative example, the optimalhydel: thermal ratio for India has been suggested to be around 40:  60.But the data collected for past two decades has revealed that while during thefirst two-three decades after independence, the hydro share in India waseffectively between 35% to 45%, it started falling down subsequently and inyear 2000 it was bare 25%, too short of desired optimum.

Noresponsible country can afford to generate large blocks of electricity fromfossil fuel driven plants for this practise is climatologically unfavourableand discouragable. Increasing fossil fuel based energy generation significantlycontribute to environment related problems both locally and globally. In thistriangular tussle of “environment, economy and energy”, it is hydropower whichis going to be one of the most effective and robust responses to the problem athand. Sachin Mishra notes that “Hydropower stations have the inherent abilityfor instantaneous starting, stopping and load variations which helps inimproving the reliability of the system. Thus hydropower stations are bestchoice for meeting the peak demand”. Hydropower stations also offer brightprospect in supplying the base load as the running cost in terms of fuels iseffectively zero. There are a dozen of other features specific to hydro powerplants that make them very attractive and a dependable choice to tackle thegrowing energy demands. But the conventional hydel projects above 25MW (therange varies from country to country) generally described as medium/large scalehydel plants suffer from a number of technical, environmental, economic andother constraints , which has lately reduced their power of attraction fordevelopers and also forced governments to strictly reserve their ventures intolarge scale hydel projects. The huge capital investment that is entailed in theconstruction of large HEPs makes the investors think again and again and addsto their reluctance from participating into such huge venture. The recent riseof cost per Megawatt incurred in the HEP scheme has further tightened theexisting economic throttle. Another discouraging factor encountered in theexecution of HEPs is their exceedingly large gestation period, sometimesextending to ten years which renders the problems of load forecast, inflationand market variation for this period highly difficult. The project conceived aseconomically viable at the time of conceiving may turn out to be economicliability at the time of completion because of large time gap. Theenvironmental issues associated with HEPs are further discouraging, for itleads to massive demographic and topographic changes in addition to inventingdozens of environmental concerns. These are the issues associated with HEPsthat has shifted the interest from large scale hydro electric projects (HEPs)to small hydel projects (SHEPs). “Big projects with large reservoirs havebecome progressively more controversial in view of the magnitude ofenvironmental issues created by them. The economic disadvantage of submergingland resources, large gestation period, deforestation, industry resettlementhave become too obvious to be ignored. “, observes,  Mishra. These issuesare easily circumnavigated by SHP’s because of their small or no reservoirs andminimal impact on environment. “Small hydro projects are also playing avery important role in the modern world for the development of the remote areaswhich are not main grid connected specially in western Himalayan region ofIndia”, notes N.S.Thakur.

   

The regionof J&K has abundant potential for small hydel power projects. The estimatedpotential of state in SHP sector has been placed around 1500 MW, of which onlya small fraction has been tapped till date. The potential harnessed insmall hydel category (upto 25 Mw) is only about 75 Mw.  Thisrepresents a dismal picture . Again the reasons for this impasse being rootedin official prolongation, lack of dynamic and viable DISCOMS within the state.The challenges imposed by terrain and topography being of no lessersignificance, but this technical fault line is furthered by official and NOCissuing agencies.

Given thatmedium and large HEPS  are not going to lose their significance any soonerand states, locally as well as globally will continue their ventures open intolarge scale HEPS. Having said that the viability and versatility of SHPS isgoing to make them “selected preferential” in future and they are surely goingto put a tough challenge to large HEPS, if pursued aggressively. Jammu andKashmir may no longer wish to lag behind rest of the country or for thatmatters rest of the world in harnessing its small hydel potential. But torealise this end it needs to gear up all its departments affiliated directly orindirectly with the field, so that investors and entrepreneurs find this fieldattractive in terms of  state’s proactive attitude towards getting theseprojects executed and making state to leap  forward in fulfilling itsgrowing energy demands.

Author is engineering graduate, comparative studies student and a freelancer

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