236-mw Duggar project in Himachal Pradesh

By this month-end, Mumbai-based infrastructure player Patel Engineering Ltd is expected to sign a pre-implementation agreement with the Himachal Pradesh government for the 236-mw Duggar hydropower project. For the civil engineering company, which is grooming itself into an independent hydropower producer, this is seen as a major boost. Officials of Patel Engineering told Projectmonitor that this would be the biggest hydropower project in the company's portfolio and would also be its first in the northern state, in the capacity of a developer.
After being associated with several hydropower projects as a civil contractor, Patel Engineering forayed into hydropower development when it won the 100-mw Gongri hydropower project in Arunachal Pradesh in 2007. Discussing the current status, officials said that land acquisition for the project was under way and the project was awaiting techno-economic clearance from Central Electricity Authority. Meanwhile, SNC-Lavalin of Canada is working with the DPR, they added.
Patel Engineering recently also won the medium-sized Saskong project in Arunachal. Both the projects will be run-of-river projects located in the Tawang basin. It is also learnt that the topography of the Saskong site could even support a hydropower scheme of up to 45 mw, although the capacity envisaged in the MoU signed with the state government was only 7 mw.
The company is also expected to enjoy "logistic" advantages for implementing its hydropower projects as it is already executing contracts for large hydropower projects in north and northeast. In Himachal, for instance, the engineering company is involved with the 412-mw Rampur hydropower project of Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam while in Arunachal Pradesh, key contracts are being executed for the state government-owned 111-mw Sawra-Kuddu project.
The Himachal Pradesh government recently concluded a round of awarding hydropower projects to private promoters. Along with Patel Engineering, agreements are also likely to be signed for 12 other projects aggregating around 1,350 mw, mainly in the Satluj and Chenab river basins.
Himachal Pradesh has a hydropower potential of 18,820 mw out of which less than a third had translated into installed capacity as of August last year. In terms of potential, it is second only to Arunachal Pradesh that domineers with 50,328 mw. India is estimated to hold nearly 1,50,000 mw of hydropower potential, less than 25 per cent of which is tapped so far.