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Hydropower
India is building hydropower at two scales at once: small run of river plants, where a new scheme puts ₹2,584.60 crore behind about 1,500 MW, and large pumped storage projects meant to hold solar power for the evening. Both are running into where they are being built, and after Nepal's August flood the question is whether the Himalaya can carry what is planned for it.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2016: the Gadgil and Kasturirangan reports on the Western Ghats
- Prelims 2013: States where the lion-tailed macaque is found
What the two scales are
- Small hydro in India means a project of up to 25 MW, usually run of river, using a stream's natural fall rather than a large reservoir.
- A pumped storage project pumps water uphill when power is cheap and releases it through turbines when demand peaks, so it stores energy rather than generating it.
- Pumping costs more power than the plant returns, which makes a pumped storage project a net consumer of electricity and a store of value only when the price gap is wide enough.
The small hydro scheme
21 GWAssessed small hydro potential, at more than 7,100 sites
5.2 GWHarnessed so far
200Projects to get Detailed Project Reports
Why small hydro, and what holds it back
Why small hydro
- Run of river designs need relatively little land
- No large scale submergence or displacement
- Power close to where it is used, in remote terrain
The barriers
- Long lead times
- Delays in forest, environment and right of way clearances
- Hard to finance, so the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency was urged to bring in long term patient capital
Where hydropower runs into the mountain
- A cumulative impact assessment weighs every project on a river basin together, rather than clearing each one on its own, and India applies it unevenly.
- The World Commission on Dams reported in 2000 that a dam's costs fall on the people nearest it while its benefits travel, which is the argument still being had.
- The Himalaya is young, steep and seismically active, so a glacial lake burst or a landslide reaches a project built in the valley below it.
What has happened
10 Sep 2026
A Small Hydro Power Development Scheme was proposed for 2026-27 to 2030-31, at ₹2,584.60 crore for about 1,500 MW.
- It pays States to prepare Detailed Project Reports, so the pipeline exists before the money does.
7 Sep 2026
Nepal's 26 August flood destroyed two hydropower projects and damaged at least thirteen under construction, and the damage was blamed less on the trigger than on where the projects sat.
- Neither Nepal nor India assesses Himalayan projects basin by basin, so each clearance ignores what the others have already done.
The Indian Express, 30 Aug 2026: Nepal floods: The red flags in dam-building in the Himalayas (opens in a new tab) · The Indian Express, 1 Sep 2026: Express in Nepal: How hydropower firm is planning search for missing staff (opens in a new tab)
28 Aug 2026
The Karnataka High Court froze the 2,000 MW Sharavathi pumped storage project, which lies entirely inside the Sharavathi Valley Lion-Tailed Macaque Wildlife Sanctuary.
- An expert committee under the National Board for Wildlife had recommended against it.
- Katlekan's forest there holds endemics such as the Katlekan marsh nut and the Gund day gecko.