India’s Proposed Arunachal Hydropower Project Includes “buffers” to Address Potential Impact From China’s Dam in Tibet

India is designing a proposed hydropower project in Arunachal Pradesh’s Upper Siang district with concerns over China’s proposed 60,000 MW hydropower in Medog, Tibet.

The 11,000 MW project, which is still in the planning stage and is more than five times the size of the largest such projects in India, has been submitted to the Central Electricity Authority for appraisal by the National Hydropower Corporation. India is concerned that the dam in Medog could reduce the natural flow of water from the Brahmaputra, away from India during lean patches, or worse be used to trigger “artificial floods”. The design of the proposed project incorporates a “buffer storage” of 9 billion cubic meters of water during monsoonal flow, which could act as a store of water worth a year’s flow that would normally be available from the Brahmaputra or buffer against sudden releases.

Source: The Hindu