Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), an Indian-government owned utility, is set to develop a 1,500MW pump storage hydel power project in Bokaro district, Jharkhand.
Image: DVC to develop 1.5GW pump storage hydel power project in Jharkhand. Photo: courtesy of Tarunsamanta/Wikipedia.org.
The pump storage hydel power project is estimated to cost Rs52bn ($750m), revealed DVC chairman P K Mukhopadhyay to the media during the recently held CII Energy Conclave in Kolkata, West Bengal.
Mukhopadhyay has been quoted in Moneycontrol as saying: “We are preparing to build six 250MW pump storage hydel power plants (1,500MW) at Lagu Pahar on Bokaro River which will be the largest in the country and possibly even in Asia.”
DVC has completed a pre-feasibility study for the pump storage hydel power project. It is expected to come up with a detailed project report (DPR) in a couple of years.
The company is looking to invite bids for preparing the DPR for the project, which had already received an initial environment clearance.
Headquartered in Kolkata, DVC operates various power generating facilities, including thermal power stations and hydel power stations, in the Damodar River area of the eastern states of West Bengal and Jharkhand.
Some of the major power plants of the company are the 2,340MW Mejia Thermal Power Station, the 1,200MW Raghunathpur Thermal Power Station and the 1,000MW Durgapur Steel Thermal Power Station in West Bengal along with the 1,050MW Maithon Power Station, and the 1,000MW Koderma Thermal Power Station in Jharkhand.
The firm’s hydel power plant portfolio includes the 80MW Panchet, the 63.2MW Maithon and the 4MW Tilaiya projects.
Recently, DVC along with its partner energy conglomerate NTPC, has secured the Indian government approval to supply 300MW of power to neighboring country Bangladesh. For DVC, the supply of power to Bangladesh will be its first outside India.
The company, which has an installed capacity of more than 7.2GW, supplies electricity to the states of Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Jharkhand and West Bengal. It also supplies power to the Indian Railways, SAIL, Coal India, Tata Steel, Jindal and others.