Meghalaya explores solar power and pump storage in renewable energy push

Shillong: Meghalaya Power Commissioner and Secretary, Sanjay Goyal on Tuesday said they have pitched a few proposals to the Ministry in order to augment the State renewable energy portfolio in a big way.  These proposals included utilising the Umiam water reservoir for the solar plant and pump storage system to be set up in the state amongst a few others.

Reflecting on the recent gathering involving the Union Power Minister, Power Ministers, and officials from the North Eastern States, Goyal noted that the State Power Minister presented valuable proposals.

Highlighting a few of the discussion points put up by the State Power Minister, he said, “Given the fact that we do have certain locations in the state wherein mega solar plants can come up, the MeECL has already offered certain patches of the land which belongs to the corporation and unfortunately there are no takers in terms of the tenders which we have floated. Not much interest from the investors has been shown and since it is a corporate land we would like to get into a sort of partnership with the central units like NTPC. This was well received by the Union Minister and he has put the central PSUs on the job to explore these possibilities”.

The Meghalaya Power Commissioner and Secretary further mentioned that the situation is comparable to that of Umiam, where the department has been conducting studies on harnessing the potential of the Umiam water reservoir for solar energy generation. The Union Minister has instructed NEEPCO to expedite this study.

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