NHPC restarts 2 units of flood-hit Teesta-V power station in Sikkim, third unit awaited

New Delhi: NHPC Ltd has brought two of the three units of its 510 MW Teesta-V power station in Sikkim back into commercial operation, marking the partial revival of a plant that had been out of service for nearly three years following the October 2023 glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in the state.

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In a filing to the stock exchanges on Monday, the state-run hydropower producer said Unit#1 and Unit#2, of 170 MW each, resumed commercial generation from the evening of July 13, after being synchronised with the grid. The status of the third and final unit is yet to be confirmed.

What the filing said

"Two Units i.e. Unit#1 & Unit#2 (170 MW each) of Teesta-V Power Station (3 X 170 MW), Sikkim have resumed commercial generation as per scheduling of Power on 13.07.2026 (17:00 Hrs) after synchronisation with the grid," NHPC said in the disclosure.

The company added that "the commercial generation of last Unit i.e. Unit#3 will be intimated in due course."

A plant knocked out by successive disasters

The Teesta-V station, commissioned in 2008 as a run-of-river scheme with diurnal storage on the Teesta river, had contributed nothing to NHPC's generation for two consecutive financial years after being battered by back-to-back natural disasters.

The plant was first crippled by the flash flood on the intervening night of October 3 and 4, 2023, caused by the breach of the South Lhonak Lake in North Sikkim, a GLOF event that also collapsed the upstream Teesta-III dam at Chungthang and caused widespread devastation downstream. NHPC had pegged the damage from that flood at Rs 1,075.97 crore.

Restoration was set back further by a landslide over the Tail Race Tunnel (TRT) outlet structure on August 20, 2024, which the company estimated caused material damage of Rs 327.67 crore.

Restoration on a 'war footing'

NHPC pursued the rebuilding across multiple civil and hydro-mechanical work packages. During a site visit from November 2 to 4, 2025, CMD Bhupender Gupta reviewed the balance works and directed officials to bring what the company describes as a flagship station back into operation by the end of financial year 2025-26, according to a company statement at the time.

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The July 13 restart of the first two units comes a few months past that internal target. At NHPC's Q4 FY26 earnings call in May 2026, management had noted that Teesta-V's plant availability factor stood at around 75 percent and that the station had not contributed to generation in the preceding two fiscals, a drag that had pulled down the company's overall availability metrics.

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