NHPC to Miss Commissioning Deadline for Parbati-III Project

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources India (New Delhi, India)--India's state-owned hydroelectric enterprise, NHPC Limited (BSE:533098) (Faridabad, Haryana), has ramped up activities at the Parbati Hydroelectric Project (HEP) Stage III site to complete the project by the year's end. But the slow progress of the hydro and mechanical work is likely to mire NHPC's plan. Completion of work for the hydro-mechanical (HM) components, such as spillway radial, surge shafts and draft tube gates, now appears to be most critical for the commissioning of the 520-megawatt (MW) project.

The progress of electro mechanical (E&M) work is also sluggish, owing to a delay in the supply of equipment. The boxing-up work, one of the milestones for synchronization, has been pending for Unit 1 for the last five months, for want of an aeration valve. Further, the erection of a gas-insulated switchyard (GIS), which was finally taken up at the end of July 2012, will take a minimum of four to five months to complete. With all these major activities running way behind their schedules, NHPC is set to miss the targeted commissioning schedule of December 2012 for this project.

Parbati-III HEP is a run-of-river scheme that envisages the diversion of the tail race releases of the Parbati Stage II power house, as well as inflows from the Sainj River in the Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh. The project involves construction of a 43-meter-high, rock-filed dam; a 7.8-kilometer-long, horseshoe-shaped head race tunnel with a 7.25-meter diameter; a 147-meter-long, restricted-orifice type surge shaft; two 510-meter and 460-meter-long pressure shafts, each with a diameter of 4.5 meters; a 2.7-kilometer-long tail race tunnel of 8.1 meters in diameter; and an underground power house to install four vertical-axis Francis turbine units, each of 130 MW capacity. The project is expected to afford an annual energy generation of 1,963 million units, assuming a 90% performance.

NHPC has embarked on an ambitious capacity addition target of more than 8,000 MW by the end of 2017. The company plans to add hydroelectric projects totaling about 5,755 MW during the ongoing 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-17) period.

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