SRINAGAR: The drilling of India’s first geothermal power project, a one-megawatt pilot initiative, has started in the geothermal-rich Puga Valley, more than 190 km from Leh. It is a joint imitative of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), the LAHDC Leh and Himalayan Renewable Energy and Construction Firm (HRECF).
The zero-carbon renewable energy project is being executed at an altitude exceeding 14,000 feet.
The pilot project, stakeholders told the media is aimed at space heating for the residents during winter, aquaculture, agriculture, and tourism activities like lagoon spas. The survey carried out in anticipation of the project implementation suggests there is a 200-degree Celsius temperature at a depth of 1000 meters, which is sufficient to run a one-megawatt power unit. The drilling for the project is expected to be completed this season before the onset of winter.
The project is the outcome of a 2021 tri-partite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the UT Administration of Ladakh, the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council-Leh, and ONGC and the Leh-based construction company HRECF, which mostly works in renewable energy areas. ONGC has awarded the drilling contract to SEROS Drilling Private Ltd as consultants and experts from Iceland have been hired for better guidance.
Once the pilot project succeeds, efforts will be made for better exploitation of the geothermal capacity of a vast patch in the valley. A preliminary estimation suggests that a five sq km area has the potential to help generate 200 MW of clean energy.
Efforts to exploit the area for energy were made earlier when Ladakh was part of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state. However, the biggest crisis was the cost of wheeling the energy out of the region because it would cost more than the energy purchased from the open market.
