India’s first geothermal power project

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A step towards achieving the goal of carbon neutral-Ladakh, a historic tripartite agreement was signed on 6th February, between Union Territory Administration Ladakh, Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council-Leh and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) Energy Centre.

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Under this project ONGC would act as an implementing agency.1 megawatt (MW) power generation capacity shall be generated and 100 per cent free power shall be provided to the general public in the phase -1 of the pilot project.

The Phase-2 shall require deeper and lateral exploration of geothermal reservoir by drilling suitable number of wells and establishment of a higher capacity demo plant in Ladakh.

Phase-3 shall be a commercial project as per discovered capacity.

In the words of Ladakh Lieutenant Governor R K Mathur , "The signing of the MoU with ONGC for the first geothermal project in India is a promising initiative towards innovative and sustainable development of Ladakh and also a step towards achieving the goal of carbon-neutral Ladakh,". The Governor has stressed on the development of tourism and green houses around the geothermal project by studying and learning from other countries.

It has also been requested to ONGC to speed up the project and scale up to 200 MW capacity for appreciable gain. This project will provide continuous power supply and also the hot water from springs can be used for building hot swimming pools for the tourist and can be used for space-heating.