Work is expected to resume in the near future at the headworks for the 60-MW Upper Trishuli 3A hydropower project located on the Trishuli River in the Nuwakot and Rasuwa districts of Bagmati zone in central Nepal, according to published reports.
The project’s headworks are located at Salletar, 20-km north of Trishuli bazaar and construction on the project began fiscal year 2010-11.
According to several published local reports, during the week of Jan. 1, the Nepal government directed the Nepal Army to repair the access road to the headworks and place structural protections around the site.
The types of protections being placed around the site are not immediately available. The cost to implement the protections and the cost to repair the access road have not been publically released.
A date has not been released for construction to resume on the headworks at the project.
Construction at Upper Trishuli 3A stopped on April 25, 2015, after a 7.9 magnitude earthquake in Gorkha district of north-central Nepal. That seismic event and an additional earthquake on May 12 destroyed a 5-km-long section of the access road to the surge shaft, headworks, 11-kV transmission line and construction equipment.
Road access to the project’s powerhouse has been opened, but the road to the surge shaft and headworks remains impassable to necessary construction equipment and personnel, according to the project’s developer, China Gezhouba Group Company Ltd. (CGGC).
The government of Nepal and the China Export-Import (Exim) Bank signed a memorandum of understanding on the transmission line and bay extension for the project in May 2011, according to the state-owned Nepal Electricity Authority, which owns the project.
In August 2011, a Chinese delegation and Nepal’s government signed an agreement for the provision of a soft loan estimated at US$115 million. The concessional loan has a 1.75% annual interest rate, payable over a 25-year period including a 5-year grace period, according to published documents.
The government of Nepal, pre-earthquake, estimated the total cost of the project at $126 million.
A project status contract for civil, electro- and hydro-mechanical works was signed on May 28, 2010, with CGGC for $89 million.
Current government figures say earthquakes and aftershocks at that time killed about 9,000 people and injured another 22,000 in and around Barpak, a village in Gorkha district.
Source : Hydro World
