Sept. 29, 2011 - drukgreen.bt

It will require 1,460km of additional transmission lines

An important aspect of the government’s target to harness 10,000 megawatts of hydroelectricity by 2020 is to export surplus power to India. This will need building a huge network of transmission lines that is projected to cost between Nu 50-60B. According to projections by the energy department, total generation by 2020 will be around 11,488MW. By then, peak domestic demand, which is less than 300MW today, is expected to be around 1,500MW if the economy grows at the same rate. The remaining 9,988MW will be exported to India. The department of energy has worked out a national transmission grid master plan to provide a road map of building transmission lines and substations for export of surplus hydropower to India once the ten projects under the 10,000MW initiative become operational. Pooling stations in India and Bhutan will also have to be identified to transmit power to the load centres in India. The Indian government will finance the additional 1,460km of transmission lines for the ten projects to export power. As of now, Bhutan has 1,007km of high voltage transmission lines built for Tala, Chukha, Basochu and Kurichu. But these transmis­sion lines are built individually, without any holistic national plan. The energy department, in consultation with the central electricity authority of India, is preparing the master plan. Preparing the master plan in itself is expected to cost about Nu 18M.The master plan project, implemented in January 2010, is in its final stages, and will be completed by December this year. The plan will also serve as a road map beyond 2020 if or when new projects are to be built. The executive engineer of DoE, Karma Tshewang, said the national grid master plan was felt necessary to ensure minimum environment impact, and the difficulty of getting right of way to build thousands of kilometres of transmission lines. “The master plan will basically be a holistic approach, which will guide the Bhutan Power Corporation and new projects in building transmission lines from the projects to the Indian border, after which it will be connected to the Indian towers,” he added.The transmission lines will have to be built by the projects themselves up to the Indian border."We want to avoid a criss­cross of transmission lines across the nation,” Karma Tshewang said. “The master plan will provide directions as to how and where to build the lines DoE will be organising a workshop by October end in Paro, where India’s central electricity authority officials will be presenting the final draft of the master plan to Bhutan’s electricity sector, the national environment commission, land commission and forestry department. The first project to build transmission lines based on the master plan will be the Mangdechu project, which has 720MW installed capacity, the construction of which began this year, and will be completed first after Punatshangchu I and II.

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