By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Oct 10: Power department Commissioner and Secretary, Sanjay Goyal on Tuesday said that in order to augment the state’s renewable energy portfolio in a big way, few points have been pitched before the Power Ministry which includes utilising Umiam water reservoir for solar plants and pump storage system to be set up in the state.
Recalling the recent meeting of the Union Power Minister RK Singh with the Power ministers and officers of all the Northeastern states, he said that the state Power Minister, AT Mondal made valuable suggestions.
Highlighting few of the discussion points put up by the Power Minister AT Mondal, he said, “Given the fact that we do have certain location in the state wherein mega solar plants can come up, the MeECL has already offered certain patches of the land which already belongs to the corporation. Unfortunately, there are no takers in terms of the tenders which we have floated not much interest from the investors and since it is a corporate land, we would like to get into some kind of JV (joint venture) or some kind of partnership with the central units like NTPC. This was well received by the Union Power minister and he has put the central PSUs on the job to explore these possibilities”.
He said similar was the case with Umiam with the department doing the studies of utilising the water of the reservoir for the solar plants. The idea was very well received by the Union minister, who has directed NEEPCO to undertake a study on fast-track mode.
Talking about the pump storage system to be set up in the state which works on storage model, he said, “We pump the water between two reservoirs up and down and then use the storage on the reservoir at the higher level to generate the electricity in the peak time”.
“It is just like the solar batteries charge the batteries during the day time utilising the cheap power of solar and utilise it during peak time which is very high power demand and high requirement just to smoothen the curve which is very high peak during the peak hours 6 or 7 in the evening till midnight,” he said.
He also said, “We use this power and we are in a position to sell this power at an affordable rate which is more than the rates which we normally have during the day time”.
“Here also we have done the studies. We have identified four locations with the potential of around 3100 mega watts and we have pitched this idea before the Union government that we can take it up under the joint venture modes with any of the PSUs and the equity part of the state government funds, which we are supposed to invest, can come as a central financial assistance from the government’s side which is in the ratio of other infrastructure projects, 90-10,” he added.
He further added, “If these things come up we are going to augment our renewable energy portfolio in a big way in days to come”.