LAHORE, Feb 18: The 121-megawatt (MW) Allai Khwar Hydropower Project was put on mechanical run on Monday and will start electricity generation on trial basis by the end of this month.

According to the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda), commercial generation from the plant was scheduled to begin from the first week of March. The project had been built on Allai Khwar, a tributary of Indus River in district Battagram of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Main components of the project included 88-metre-long and 51-metre-high concrete dam, 2.3-kilometre steel-lined tunnel, power house comprising two generating units of 61.5MW each, at record design head of 687 metres and a switchyard.

The environment-friendly project has the capacity to generate 560 million units of low-cost hydel electricity per annum, resulting in saving millions of dollars on the corresponding generation of costly thermal energy. Annual benefits of the project had been estimated at Rs4.5 billion.

This is the second of three high-head hydropower projects to have been made operational. The other two includes the 72MW Khan Khwar and the 130MW Duber Khwar hydropower projects. The Khan Khwar Hydropower Project was completed in November 2010 while the Duber Khwar Hydropower Project was nearing completion.

The Allai Khwar project is a part of Wapda’s least-cost energy generation plan being executed on priority to cope with the increasing demands of electricity and water in the country.

Under the plan, the authority is working on 26 large and medium projects with a cumulative power generation capacity of 21,000MW and water storage capacity of 13 million acre feet (MAF).

Of these projects, six multipurpose schemes with a power generation capacity of over 400MW and water storage capacity of 1.23MAF would be completed in the next two to three months.