Talking to the visiting newspersons, general manager, NHPC, Uri project, V K Kanjlia said that negotiations with the state government are on in this regard as the capacity addition under stage-II is possible only when the additional regulated water from the Kishan Ganga river becomes available to the corporation.

Kanjlia said that the J&K government was considering to construct a 330 mw hydro project on the Kishan Ganaga river from where regulated water would be made available to NHPC for adding another 480 mw capacity at its Uri power project.

Located near Srinagar and situated amidst huge mountains, the project is a run-of-the-river scheme on Jhelum river and has been constructed using the latest state-of-the-art technology, by a Swedish consortium led by Skanska on a turnkey basis at a cost of Rs3,300 crore.

Giving details about the 480 mw Uri stage-I, the general manager said that the Uri project had been contributing 50 per cent to the total revenue of NHPC. The project contributed as much as Rs 567 crore every year towards the total revenue of the corporation which stands at about Rs 1100 crore.The project has on and off shore components of Rs 1,487.35 crore and Rs 1812.65 crore respectively. Foreign funding was arranged through a grant from Swedish International Development Authority, Sweden and the UK, AB Swenska Export Credit of Sweden, Nordic Investment Bank of Sweden and Export credit from SCMB of UK.

The annual generation capacity of this project stands at 2663 million units and the power is supplied to various states including J&K, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Chandigarh.

Against a target of 1,500 mw in 1997-98, the Uri project generated 2,171 mw power, which was sold to various states in the northern region at a rate of Rs 2.58 perunit.

For the current financial year, NHPC has targeted 2,400 mw power generation, of which about 1,800 mw has already been generated.

Kanjlia said that the project has been designed to produce 2,663 mw in a 90 per cent "water dependable year", and is expected to pay back the entire investment.

The Uri project, however, is losing about 10 per cent of the generated electricity due to inadequate transmission facilities, for which it had approached both the nodal ministry and the Power Grid Corporation (PGCIL), he said.

Electricity is transmitted through 93-km long, 400 kv double transmission lines to Wagoora (near Srinagar), but low voltage transmission lines between the Pampore-Kishenpur segment have become the bone of contention between NHPC and PGCIL, With four units of 120 mw each, the Uri project is a run-of-the-river project for which Jhelum is diverted into a 10.7-km long "head race tunnel", with a diameter of 8.40 meters before the water falls from a height of 254.8 meters on heavy turbines toproduce electricity.