Leh's Power is beneath the ground

What can urban jungle Gurgaon in the national capital territory (NCT) possibly have in common with the pristine Leh? Well, not much, except that NCT’s eyesore and the erstwhile Silk Route town pretty much run on diesel. While Gurgaon is captive to reckless urban planning, Leh faces a unique conundrum. At 9,800 ft, the national power grid can’t reach this township of about 30,000 inhabitants. Worse, in winter, when the demand for power is at its peak, Leh’s mini-hydel plants shut down as water freezes up in the reservoirs.

Today, Leh lives on generators that consume around 50,000 litres of diesel per day, releasing dangerous levels of greenhouse gases into this ecologically-sensitive terrain. The upshot: melting glaciers, thinning snowfalls and freak showers. Indian Army, which has a sizeable deployment in the region that shares borders with Pakistan as well as China, relies on its own fleet of diesel generators.

The answer to Leh’s travails may lie in the bowels of the earth. Scientists say that geothermal plants that tap the heat deep from the earth with minimal emissions of greenhouse gases could be ideal for eco-sensitive regions such as Leh. India was a pioneer in this field with the Geographical Survey of India (GSI) identifying Ladakh’s Puga Valley as an ideal for geothermal plants as back as in 1975.

China broke into the scene in 1981 with its Yangbajain Geothermal Power Station in Tibet across Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh. Circa 2009, India is yet to have its first geothermal plant — despite GSI identifying seven ideal spots across the country — while the Yangbaijan plant lights up half of Lhasa. China plans to increase the capacity of the plant from 25 mw to 60 mw in the near future.

Generation from renewable energy sources today account for 7-9% of India’s 1,65,000 mw installed capacity. However, the efforts are skewed towards solar and wind sources than relatively new ones such as geothermal that could be the model suited for regions such as Leh.

Puga Valley’s clear stream geysers are the offshoot of the collision of the Indian plate with the Eurasian plate. Another tectonic collision has gifted the Philippines with a string of active volcanic spots making it a leader in geothermal power. The Philippines today ranks next only to US in terms of power generated through geothermal sources.

Dr MR Nouni, a director with India’s ministry of renewable and new energy sources (MRNES), says that the geothermal field in the country has

seen only some ‘proprietary’ activity so far. Though power is on the concurrent list that straddles central as well state authorities, such small projects are a prerogative of states, he says. LNJ Bhilwara, a textiles-to-power conglomerate, has shown interest in setting up a 20 mw plant in Puga, but the project is yet to be cleared by the Jammu & Kashmir government.

Dr A Absar, LNJ’s vice-president for geothermal, says the project will incur a capital expenditure of Rs 400 crore, twice that of a coal-based plant, to generate the same amount of energy. “But with geothermal, that’s pretty much your only expense. The technology runs 24x7, is clean, and the same plant could be scaled up to about 50 mw with a little expenditure,” he says.

In a typical geothermal plant, pipes are drilled into earth 1-3 km deep to bring the steam or hot water or both to the surface. The steam is used to propel the turbine to generate power, while the hot water is used to generate steam from chemicals like propane that have low boiling points. The leftover water is drilled back into the same heat source.

Dr Nouni says therein lies the rub in the technology. “You can assess the quality of the source — in other words, its likelihood to generate steam or hot water — only when you drill over a kilometre,” he says. LNJ’s project has hit a wall mainly as the state remains unconvinced how the company will transmit power from Puga to Leh, stretching 175 km.

Similar projects to be based in Gujarat and the Cambay basin are stuck at the drawing board pending a clear government directive. A paper by Dr B Chandrasekharam, professor of earth sciences at IIT-Bombay, estimates that
domestic geothermal provinces have a capacity to produce 10,600 mw.

MRNES has to come clean here. If the technology is not feasible for India, then it owes an explanation as to why private firms are still pursuing this. And if it is suited for Puga and Cambay, then the ministry has to put its power behind the technology.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Lehs-power-is-beneath-the-ground/articleshow/5221416.cms