Small hydro in India: Bringing power to all -Published: Apr 1, 2011

India is ranked fifth in the world in terms of exploitable hydropower potential, but only 20
per cent of its potential has been developed. New Delhi aims to increase hydro’s share of
national power output from 26 per cent to 40 per cent. Small hydro has a big role to play,
writes Penny Hitchin.
Hydro is one of power-hungry India’s abundant and under-utilized resources. Only 20 per
cent of its huge 150 GW of exploitable hydropower potential, fifth largest in the world, has
so far been harnessed, although the government wants to see greater development of hydro
generation. Its advantages include its technological maturity, ease of maintenance, reliability
and low operating costs. Its main drawback is its high capital costs.
Befitting a country whose ‘Father of the Nation’ national icon Mahatma Gandhi was a
devout advocate of economic self-reliance, small-scale hydro is going to play its part. This
should notably improve both the energy and economic footprints of rural, remote and
inaccessible areas.
Small hydro projects in India require specific equipment characterized by simplicity,
reliability and easy maintenance Source: Andritz Hydro
In India, hydropower projects with a capacity up to 25 MW, categorized as small hydropower
(SHP) projects, come under the auspices of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy
(MNRE).
MNRE’s database of potential sites for small hydro identifies 5718 sites, with a combined
capacity of 15 384 MW, for SHP projects. The MNRE wants a combination of public, private,
grid-connected and off-grid projects to double installed SHP capacity to 6000 MW by the end
of 2017.
Hallmarks of SHP design: simple, reliable, easy to maintain
Scaling down large hydropower installations does not, however, make a SHP project: specific
equipment is needed, characterized by simplicity, reliability and easy maintenance by non-
specialists. The focus of the MNRE programme is to lower the cost of equipment, increase its
reliability and establish projects that give the maximum advantage in terms of capacity
utilization.
India has varied topography including mountains, deserts, fertile plains, rainforests and
temperate coasts. Summer monsoons between June and October provide most of its
rainfall. Each hydro project must be purpose designed for the site where it will be
constructed.
If a scheme is to generate throughout the year, sufficient flow must be available whatever
the season. The ‘head’ is the vertical height that the water falls on the available section of
the waterway. Hilly areas where water plunges across the contours down steep descents
offer ‘high head’, while rivers and canals with small gradients need ‘low head’ designs.

In hills and mountains, streams rushing down narrow, steep-sided valleys are suitable for
medium and high head projects using relatively small volumes of water. These are normally
‘run of river’ type with a small diversion constructed to divert a portion of the flow. The
diversion takes water from the stream or river by diverting it through an intake at a weir.
The diverted water passes through a settling tank or ‘forebay’ where it slows down and
suspended particles settle out. The forebay is usually protected by an arrangement of metal
bars (trash rack) that filter out waterborne debris. A pressure pipe, or ‘penstock’, takes the
water from the forebay to the turbine, which is enclosed in the powerhouse together with
the generator and control equipment. The water discharges down a ‘tailrace’ back into the
river
In the plains, irrigation canals with assured discharges often have shallow falls along their
route suitable for installing small low head hydro projects (the water drives a turbine or
waterwheel placed in the water course). SHP projects can be constructed just downstream
of a dam or barrage, taking advantage of the difference in the water level between the
reservoir and its downstream course.
Historically SHP installations have been expensive to build but cheap to run by trained
members of the local community. The development of smaller, lighter and more efficient
higher speed turbine equipment, the lower cost of electronic speed and load control
systems, and inexpensive plastic penstock pipes are now bringing down the capital costs.
Harnessing SHP to micro-grids to transform life in remote mountain areas

Proximity (or capital investment) is required if the scheme is to connect to the transmission
grid. Over half of India’s rural households are off-grid, something that the government’s
‘Power for All by 2012’ policy is intended to address.
In remote areas decentralized distributed generation (DDG) or smaller micro-grids may be
able to facilitate this. A micro-grid is a collection of small generators for a group of users in
close proximity. SHPs are particularly good for micro-grids: a number of streams can be
harnessed to produce electricity that can be used to electrify areas away from the utility
grid.
The SHP plants produce cheap and reliable power that can be distributed over the local area
by a micro-grid or mini-grid. Examples of where this would be valuable can be found in the
state of Uttarakhand, in the foothills of the Himalayas, where about 63 per cent of the
population lives in rural areas, in small villages in dense, remote forest where laying grid
power lines is rendered impossible by forest laws and high costs.
In the Bageshwar district of Uttarakhand, nine SHPs run in isolated operating mode for only
eight hours per day (wasting 16 hours of energy daily) with a very low load factor. A recent
case study (‘Design of Mini Grid for SHP Plants’ by S.N. Singh, M.P. Sharma & A.Singh)
designed a mini-grid to improve the load factor of the SHPs and supply power locally.
The mini-grid connected the SHPs with each other and with the nearby 33 kV grid substation
(9 km, 15 km and 17 km from the nearest SHPs). The electrical engineers analyzed various
system layouts and transmission line routing and found that an optimization using the
shortest line length gave a break even point (BEP) of 6.5 years (based on an annual interest
rate of 11 per cent).

The model showed that implementing this mini-grid design would improve the load factor
and enable local consumers to have electricity around the clock. The availability of power
would also open up a range of activities such as grinding, wood carving, welding, carpentry,
repair of electrical/electronic devices, as well as the use of computers that could transform
residents’ economic prospects.

Measures to encourage SHP

‘Unleashing the Potential of Renewable Energy in India’, a World Bank report published in
February of this year, identifies SHP as one of the least expensive and most attractive forms
of renewable energy. It uses established and locally made technology, and has maximum
power production in the summer months, matching seasonal demand for electricity.
However, development has been hampered by Indian bureaucracy, which has earned a
reputation as ‘the most stifling in the world’. Long delays in getting clearances and acquiring
access to infrastructure, lack of clear policy for private sector participation in some states,
and issues associated with land acquisition are all holding back development of SHP and
other renewable energy.
More than 60 per cent of project cycle time in SHP projects is spent getting a raft of
government permissions including wildlife, fisheries, panchayat (local councils), irrigation,
public health, revenue department, pollution control board, industrial licences, work
permits, approval for interconnection and so on. It takes between four and eight years from
conception to commissioning – at least double the time taken in neighbouring Sri Lanka.
Such a long cycle commissioning timeline is routine practice even though the state agencies
project an average time period of just six months for obtaining all clearances.

Based on discussions with stakeholders, PricewaterhouseCoopers compiled a project

allocation and development cycle for a SHP project in the Himachal Pradesh showing areas
where potential problems and issues come up in project development and commissioning. It
shows that projects must negotiate as many as 20 stages, each raising the risk of significant
delay.

The World Bank report says that SHP is India’s most economically viable form of renewable
technology, with an average economic cost of 3.56 rupees/kWh ($0.08/kWh), which is
comparable with the thermal generation that provides the majority of the country’s
electricity supply. About 3 GW of SHP is economically feasible, when the avoided cost of
coal-based generation of 3.08 rupees/kWh is considered.

Although the government, through MNRE, says that encouraging development of SHP is a
key aim, Indian renewable energy development lacks an integrated national economic
perspective and has been largely driven by uncoordinated state policies. Furthermore, the
states with the richest renewable energy resources lag farthest in development.

The northern states of Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, all in the
Himalayan foothills, possess two thirds of India’s SHP resources, combined with the lowest
generation costs. Yet resource utilization is less than 20 per cent and their combined
installed capacity is less than that of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka combined.

As the World Bank Report advises, “raising the utilization rate requires immediate
attention”. It advocates development of single window clearance for all renewable projects,
promoting innovative approaches, a competitive bidding process, and providing long-term
funding options for producers.

During the 1990s most SHP developments were public sector projects. In the last ten years,
private projects have come to the fore. MNRE reports that 23 states have policies for setting
up commercial SHP projects through private sector participation. If the bureaucracy can be
streamlined, then perhaps private investment can rapidly fuel development of India’s SHP
sector, bringing energy and economic opportunity to communities which currently lack both.