29 hydro power projects await CWC evaluation: Goyal

The projects have a total capacity of 10,589.5 MW

As many as 29 hydro power projects with an overall capacity of 10,000 MW are awaiting appraisal from the Central Water Commission, the government said today.

"29 hydel projects totalling 10,589.5 MW capacity are with the CWC for appraisal," Power Minister Piyush Goyal said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

As per the existing guidelines of CWC for multipurpose projects, appraisals are to be completed within 6 months for the states where the Central Design Organisation (CDO) exists.

It is 12 months for those states where CDO does not exist. Appropriate compliance of observations issued on different aspects have to be complied with by the concerned project developer.

Ten projects aggregating an installed capacity of 1159.5 MW are multipurpose water resource projects having both irrigation and power component, Goyal said.

He added that 19 hydel projects of 9430 MW capacity have only power component.

Total land which is proposed to be irrigated by the 10 multipurpose water resource projects is 11,76,961 hectares.

Detailed reports of hydro power projects with capital expenditure of more than Rs 1,000 crore are submitted to Central Electricity Authority (CEA) for concurrence.

In order to appraise various design aspects, CEA consults CWC, Central Soil and Mineral Research Station and Geological Survey of India.

Once all the aspects are approved by the appraising groups or agencies, CEA endeavours to accord concurrence as far as practicable within a period of 90 working days.