Dul Hasti is a 390 MW

hydroelectric power plant Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined an ...

in Kishtwar district of Jammu and Kashmir,

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

built by

NHPC NHPC Limited (erstwhile National Hydroelectric Power Corporation ) is an Indian government hydropower board under the ownership of Ministry of Power, Government of India that was incorporated in the year 1975 with an authorised capital ...

. The power plant is a

run-of-the-river Run-of-river hydroelectricity (ROR) or run-of-the-river hydroelectricity is a type of hydroelectric generation plant whereby little or no water storage is provided. Run-of-the-river power plants may have no water storage at all or a limited amou ...

type on the

Chenab River The Chenab River () is a major river that flows in India and Pakistan, and is one of the 5 major rivers of the Punjab region. It is formed by the union of two headwaters, Chandra and Bhaga, which rise in the upper Himalayas in the Lahaul regi ...

, in a rugged, mountainous section of the Himalayas, and several hundred kilometers from larger cities in the

Jammu Division The Jammu division (; ) is a revenue and administrative division within Jammu and Kashmir, a union territory of India. It consists of the districts of Jammu, Doda, Kathua, Ramban, Reasi, Kishtwar, Poonch, Rajouri, Udhampur and Samba. Mos ...

. It consists of a tall gravity dam which diverts water through a long headrace tunnel to the power station which discharges back into the Chenab. The project provides peaking power to the Northern Grid with beneficiary states being Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Delhi and Union Territory of Chandigarh. It was constructed between 1985 and 2007.

Design

The Dul Hasti Hydro-Electric Project (HEP) involves a dam and a tunnel ending in a power plant at a bend in the Chenab River in the vicinity of

Kishtwar Kishtwar is a town, municipality and administrative headquarter of the Kishtwar District in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The district was carved out of the Doda district in 2007. It is located in the Jammu division. T ...

. The dam is located at the village of Dul and the power plant at the village of Hasti, giving the name "Dul Hasti" to the project. The drop in the elevation between Dul and Hasti gives a hydraulic head of for power generation. The Dam is 65 m high and 186 m long. It is equipped with low-level gated spillways which can be used to flush

silt Silt is granular material of a size between sand and clay and composed mostly of broken grains of quartz. Silt may occur as a soil (often mixed with sand or clay) or as sediment mixed in suspension with water. Silt usually has a floury feel ...

load.The Big Brother
Kashmir Life, 23 June 2012.Annual Report 2006–07
Ministry of Power, 2007, p. 7.

Background

Begun in 1985, the Dulhasti Power project, set in the northern Indian provinces of

Jammu Jammu is the winter capital of the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. It is the headquarters and the largest city in Jammu district of the union territory. Lying on the banks of the river Tawi, the city of Jammu, with an area of ...

and Kashmir, represents an example of a disaster in project cost estimation and delivery. As initially conceived, the project's cost was estimated at 1.6 billion rupees (about $50 million). By the time the contract was let, the cost estimate had risen to 4.5 billion rupees and later successively to 8, 11, 16, and 24 billion rupees (nearly $750 million). The project became operational on 7 April 2007 and has been generating over 2000 Million Units of electricity per year.

Contracting and design

The contract for the power generation project was first awarded to a French consortium at a price of $50 million, who almost immediately asked for an upward price revision. The site was intended to capitalize on the proximity to a large river systems capable of providing the water capacity needed to run a hydroelectric plant of Dulhasti's dimensions. Unfortunately, the site selected for the project came with some serious drawbacks as well. First, it was sited in the disputed border region between Pakistan and India. Jammu and Kashmir have been the epicenter of numerous and serious clashes between separatist forces demanding independence and Indian army . Constructing such an obvious target as a power plant in the disputed area was sure to provoke reaction by militant groups, using it as their chief means of opposition. Thus, the additional costs of providing security to the site quickly became prohibitively expensive. A second problem concerns the sheer geographical challenge of creating a large plant in a region almost totally devoid of supporting infrastructure, including an adequate logistics network (roads and rail lines). Building the plant in the foothills of the Himalayas may be scenic, but it is not cost effective, particularly as almost all supplies had to be brought in with air transportation, at exorbitant costs. All raw materials, including cement, wood, stone, and steel, had to be hauled by helicopter for miles over snowbound areas.Now it is the source of electricity for most of the states and the city.

Design

Background

Contracting and design

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

Further reading