North Eastern Electric Power Corporation, Guwahati, India
Online published on 6 November, 2015.
Hydro project development in Arunachal Pradesh with huge promises has lost its initial momentum with a very low visibility of execution of projects on ground. The project development has suffered due to various technical, commercial and administrative reasons. Commercial viability of some of the projects could not be established on account of various environmental obligatory issues like release of increased quantum of environmental flow, provision of free unhindered river stretch of specific minimum length between two cascading reservoirs, etc. Provision of flood storage component in selected project at the cost of electricity generation has influenced commercial viability of the concerned projects. High cost of land and latest provisions of Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) have also pushed up the tariff of projects. Development of hydro projects in Arunachal Pradesh is imperative duly considering India's commitment for reduction of carbon emission in coming decades. Therefore, some modifications in policy are necessary to bring back the hydro sector in the state to the right path. In this paper, some discussions have been made vis-à-vis policy changes for rectification of the situation.
