Dulhasti

Dulhasti is an 390MW hydroelectric power plant in Kishtwar district of Jammu and Kashmir, India built by NHPC. The power plant is built on the swift-flowing Chenab River in the Doda region, a rugged, mountainous section of the Himalayas, and several hundred kilometers from larger cities. The project provides peaking power to the Northern Grid with beneficiary states being Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarkhand, Rajasthan, Delhi and Union Territory of Chandigarh.

Background

Begun in 1985, the Dulhasti Power project, set in the northern Indian provinces of Jammu 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). As of 2004, the project has still not been completed, although well over $1 billion has been spent pursuing it. The project sought to build a dam, erect a hydroelectric generating station, and string hundreds of miles of transmission lines starting near the headwaters of a system of rivers flowing onto the plains south of the mountain region.

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 supported by the Pakistan government and Indian army units stationed in the region to keep peace. Constructing such an obvious target as a power plant in the disputed area was sure to provoke reaction by nationalist groups, using terrorism 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.

Current Status

The project became operational on 7th April 2007 and has been generating 1907 Million Units of electricity in a 90% Dependable year^[1]

1. ^ http://www.nhpcindia.com/Projects/english/Scripts/Prj_Introduction.aspx?vid=16

Sources

Pinto, Jeffrey K. (2009). Project Management - Achieving Competitive Advantage (Custom Edition). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson. ISBN 9780558202897.