10-km long headrace tunnel completed on Sewa project

Dalhousie, HP, Nov 4 (UNI) The National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) accomplished its excavation work last week by day-lighting its 10-km long headrace tunnel on the Sewa Hydroelectric Project (Stage-II).

In an official communique issued by the Union Ministry of Power today, Secretary (Power) to the Government of India, Anil Razdan congratulated Chairman and Managing Director, NHPC, S K Garg. He also applauded the entire team, headed by project General Manager V K Rattan, for achieving the milestone.

The project, initially, would cost about Rs 665.46 crore, from its date of sanction and is intended to be completed and commissioned by June, 2009.

Mr Rattan said the project would generate around 535.63 million units of power annually, which would be supplied to the power grids for further distruibution to the beneficiary states -- Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and the Union Territory of Chandigarh.

Jammu and Kashmir would get 12 per cent free power from the project, he added.

The 120-km SHP (Stage-II), a run-of-the-river project being executed on the river Sewa, is located in the Basholi tehsil of Kathua district, Jammu and Kashmir, and has its base camp at Khairi adjacent to the Chamera Stage-I power station constructed by the NHPC, in Dalhousie tehsil of Chamba district.

Besides, the 10-km long headrace tunnel, the SHP (Stage-II) envisages the construction of a 48-m high concrete gravity dam at Gatti village, steel-lined penstocks and an underground powerhouse with three units of 40 MW each, at Mashka village, as well as a 780-m long tailrace tunnel.

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