Nathpa Jhakri Hydro Power Station builds up Rs 6,900 crore reserves

 The power plant has been making the most of water availability in the river Satluj, currently generating in the range of 38 million units of electricity every day against its design capacity of 36 million units which is upto 1,625 MW against its installed capacity of 1,500 MW.

With optimum operations and such improvisations, the power station has been able to become debt free in less than 10 years of its commercial operations and was now generating revenue to fund the Company’s upcoming projects in other states and neighbouring countries as well, told Sanjeev Sood, General Manager/Head of Power Station, in an exclusing interview with Millennium Post.

 The World Bank-funded power plant, he told had been established with debt and equity ratio of 1 to 1. Completed at a cost of over Rs 8,300 crore, the plant thus had a debt of more than Rs 4,000 crore. With efficient finance handling and loan swapping, the company had also saved interest costs to the tune of more than Rs.50 crore, he said. The flagship project of SJVN, he added, was thus churning water not just for electricity, but massive revenues like Gold. The company already has reserves to the tune of Approx Rs.6900 crore to fund its upcoming projects, he added.

About efficient operations of the plant, he informed that during last financial year 2015-16, the power station had generated 7,314 million units of electricity against its design energy of 6,612 million units while during the first quarter of the current financial year, the power station had already produced 2,424 million units of electricity. During the 12 years of its successful operations, the power station has generated more than 82,000 million units of electricity, Sood said.

We have also taken up a R&D project with public sector Bhel in joint venture for developing mechanism of Laser Treatment over hard coating of turbine under water parts for improving their life thus resulting in low maintenance time and costs, informed Sanjeev Sood. The Nathpa Jhakri hydro power station, he further informed was the first in the country to have established its own hard coating plant near the generators. 

The facility, he added, had improved the silt bearing capacity of the machines 4 to 5 times. For implementing the facility the company had preferred indegenous technology thus eliminating the frequent need of foreign consultants.  

During the teething years of its operations, the power plant having the largest machines of 250 mw each in the country, it was found that the excessive silt in the river was demaging the turbine parts frequently thus necessitating their hard coating at distant places like Jodhpur/Delhi and thus we realised the need of having our own in-house hard coating facility.