Aizawl, July 18 (IANS) The state-owned North Eastern Electric Power Corporation Ltd. (NEEPCO) will set up three power plants in Mizoram, generating a total of 1,526 MW, officials said here Monday.
The two sides signed a Memorandum of Agreement last month "for commissioning three hydel power projects (815 MW, 635 MW and 76 MW), with a cumulative generation capacity of 1,526 MW," a NEEPCO spokesman told IANS.
Mizoram has many rivers, creating a huge scope for setting up hydel power projects.
The Tlawng, considered the most important river in northern Mizoram, flows north to join the Barak river in southern Assam's Cachar district. The Kolodyne, which originates in neighbouring Myanmar, has four big tributaries linking eastern and southern Mizoram with Myanmar and western part of the state with Bangladesh.
The official said that the NEEPCO authorities led by its new chairman-cum-managing director Prem Chand Pankaj would soon start talks for settling land acquisition and other logistical issues.
"NEEPCO would add an additional 5,000 MW of power in northeast by the end of 12th Five Year Plan (2012-13 to 2016-17)," Pankaj told reporters in Agartala last week.
Currently, the NEEPCO, under the union power ministry, has been executing three hydro-electric and two gas-based thermal power projects in Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura with a total generation capacity of 920 MW.
"We are planning to form joint ventures with various state governments of the region to convert the viable existing open cycle plants to combined cycle plants, thereby increasing efficiencies as well as capacity of the operational power projects," the NEEPCO chief said.
The corporation, set up in April 1976, operates five power stations - three hydro-electric and two thermal - in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Tripura, generating a total of 1,130 MW. It accounts for around 50 percent of the northeast region's installed capacity.
Currently Mizoram is generating around 40 MW of electricity from some diesel power stations and nine micro hydel stations against the peak hours demand of over 100 MW in the state. The shortfall of power is now met from the regional grids and through load shedding.