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Guwahati, Dec. 23: Central power agencies are constructing four power corridors which will help evacuate 24,000MW power from the Northeast to other parts of the country.
A source said a lot of work still needs to be done in power evacuation as about 45,000MW of power is to be evacuated from the Northeast through the chicken neck in the north of West Bengal.
“All transmission lines, railway lines, gas pipelines, telecommunication lines and others have to pass through the chicken neck,” the source said, adding that power needs to be evacuated as power of such magnitude will not be consumed in the region.
Big power projects are coming up in the hydropower sector in the next few years and power will be transported outside.
Power from Subansiri hydel project and Palatana thermal project will be evacuated. Of the 2,000MW Subansiri project, 1,000MW will be sent outside.
The source said four corridors of 800kV high voltage direct current (HVDC) electric power transmission system of 6,000MW is under implementation. HVDC uses direct current for the bulk transmission of electrical power, in contrast with the more common alternating current systems.
For long-distance transmission, HVDC systems are less expensive and suffer lower electrical losses. Asea Brown Boveri, a leading power and automation technology group, today booked an order worth over Rs 4,000 crore from Power Grid Corporation of India to deliver an ultra high-voltage direct current (UHVDC) transmission system under the North East-Agra transmission project.
The power will be evacuated 1,700km from Biswanath Chariali at Sonitpur in Assam to Agra in Uttar Pradesh. The power link will pass through “chicken neck; a very narrow patch of land (22km wide x 18km long) in West Bengal, bordering Nepal and Bangladesh”.
“The ultra high voltage direct current transmission system, when operating at full capacity, will have the means to supply electricity to 90 million people based on current figures for average national consumption,” an official said.
It is scheduled to be operational in 2015. The source said the ministry of power had posed a $1500 million project to the World Bank to revamp the transmission system.
“The World Bank is deliberating upon the scheme and a preliminary mission is visiting the states of the Northeast,” the source said.
The bank is gauging the power sector in the region and finding out the positive and negative issues before it thinks that the project is viable to be funded.
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