The commissioning of the 720 megawatt Mangdechhu Hydroelectric Project Authority (MHPA) has again been revised to April this year. This decision was taken during the recently held 13th MHPA authority meeting.
MHPA missed its set target for the fifth time. The authority had planned to spin unit-one in February which they say will now take place only towards the end of March. The delay according to the Project’s Managing Director is due to unforeseen circumstances.
“The point is all the authority members have advised me that we must not hurry. We must ensure everything is done following every procedure and proceed with one by one step. So this takes time otherwise the project is ready,” MHPA’s Managing Director A K Mishra said.
He added only finishing works remain such as beautification and a few final touches. The plugging of the tunnels are also underway and raising of water level at the reservoir is being done as a parallel activity to save time.
“We are aiming to spin the unit one by end of March and then start with the commissioning process. We want to commission all the units in April so that before the monsoon, we will be ready with the power generation,” he said.
The powerhouse has four units in total. Each Unit has the capacity to produce 180 megawatt of electricity.
Once the project starts to generate power, the country will earn around Nu 5.5bn annually. The power tariff agreed with India is Nu 4.12 per unit which is the highest power tariff so far.
