A 25 MW solid waste-to-power plant is coming up at Dhapa, the city’s dumping ground on the EM Bypass. The plant, being built by Astonfield Renewable Resources, is scheduled to be operational by June 2009.

The city consumes 1,300 MW to 1,400 MW of power daily in the peak of summer. The daily shortfall is 60-100 MW in summer.

The director of the company, with presence in the US and Geneva, is an NRI Bengali named Sourabh Sen. Astonfield plans to invest Rs 400-500 crore in the state over the next year to create renewable sources of energy.

Sen met Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at Writers’ Buildings on Wednesday. “The chief minister showed a lot of interest in our ideas and asked me to take some of our projects to north Bengal,” he said.

Sen, born and bred in Chandernagore, said he would meet the mayor on Friday to fine-tune the Dhapa project, work on which is likely to begin in March next year.

According to him, a team of experts led by the chief engineer of Veolia, a leading US-based solid waste-to-power company, conducted tests at Dhapa and confirmed that the composition of the waste was suitable for power generation.

“There have been a few failed attempts to generate power from waste at Dhapa. So, we were careful this time. The green light from experts has reassured us,” said Sen.

On Friday, Sen will also meet state IT minister Debesh Das to discuss the possibility of setting up cellular telephony and WiMAX towers in rural Bengal.

Astonfield, which has plans to work mainly in rural India, will set up a six MW solid waste-to-power plant at Howrah’s Belgachhia.