#Small Hydro as #Renewable Energy source for #India - Article 1 (#Introduction and #India context)
#India Context
In India, Hydro Power plants with capacity of 25 MW or below are classified as Small Hydro. Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) have taken many initiatives for the promotion of Small Hydro like “Optimizing Development of Small Hydro Resources in Hilly Regions of India”.
India has a history of about 120 years of hydropower. The first small hydro project of 130 kW commissioned in the hills of Darjeeling in 1897 mark the development of hydropower in India. The Sivasamudram project of 4500 kW was the next to come up in Mysore district of Karnataka in 1902, for supply of power to the Kolar gold mines. Following this, there were number of small hydro projects set up in various hilly areas of the country. Till the Independence (1947), the country had an installed capacity of 1362 MW, which included 508 MW hydropower projects, mainly small and medium.
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India has estimated potential of ~21 GW from ~7,000 sites. The hilly States of India mainly Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand constitute around half of this potential. Other potential States are Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Kerala.
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What is small Hydro ?
A Small Hydro Project (SHP) is the development of hydroelectric power which harnesses energy from flowing or falling water from rivers, rivulets, artificially created storage dams or canal drops for generation of electricity upto?25 MW.
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