MEIL Wins Rs 3,373 Crore Upper Indravati Pumped Storage EPC as Odisha Clears Project

Odisha’s cabinet on Monday put a price on a job Megha Engineering & Infrastructures (MEIL) has held since July. The 600 MW Upper Indravati pumped storage project in Kalahandi will cost Rs 4,708.64 crore in all, and MEIL’s EPC bid is Rs 3,372.88 crore before GST. The July letter of intent carried no value, so this is the first time anyone outside OHPC has seen the contract number. For plant owners in western Odisha, that number is what turns a hydro headline into four-plus years of rock work.

What the cabinet decided

Pragativadi and Sambad English both reported that the cabinet approved three things together: the project cost, the choice of MEIL after tendering, and the funding plan. The plant is designed to deliver about 1,040 million units of peak power a year while drawing about 1,283 million units of off-peak power to pump water back up. MEIL’s own project page says the existing Indravati reservoir will serve as the upper reservoir, a new lower reservoir will be built near Ranibahal, and the powerhouse will be underground.

Which machines this work needs

Start with the split. At the standard 18 per cent, GST would take the EPC bid to roughly Rs 3,980 crore. That leaves roughly Rs 729 crore of the approved total for land, forest clearance, consultancy and interest. Those are costs that never reach a site. On the EPC side, the reversible pump-turbines, generators and electrical kit take a large slice too. So the civil money is a minority of the headline, but at this scale it still adds up to a lot of rock and concrete.

Because the upper reservoir already exists, the earthmoving sits in two places: the new lower reservoir and the underground works. An underground powerhouse means cavern and tunnel excavation, which pulls rock drills and drill jumbos, hydraulic excavators with breakers, wheel loaders for mucking, and dumpers on short, steep hauls. Concrete lining and the powerhouse structure need batching plants, transit mixers, shotcrete units and crawler cranes. The lower reservoir is an earthwork job for excavators, dozers, dumpers and soil compactors, though the dam type and height have not been published, so the size of that fleet cannot be read yet.

The likely pattern: a contractor of MEIL’s size usually self-performs the core underground work with its own plant, as on most big power construction jobs. Outside owners are more likely to win the edges, such as aggregate crushing, haulage, approach roads and the concrete supply chain. Kalahandi is remote, so a machine that goes there tends to stay for years. That favours owning over short hire for anyone who lands a long sub-contract, and it makes spares stocking a real cost to price in.

FAQ

Who is building the Upper Indravati pumped storage project?

Megha Engineering & Infrastructures Ltd is the EPC contractor. Odisha’s cabinet approved its selection at a bid price of Rs 3,372.88 crore, excluding GST, for OHPC.

Why is the total cost higher than the EPC price?

The Rs 4,708.64 crore total includes GST, consultancy, land acquisition, forest clearance and interest during construction on top of the contract price.

When will the project be finished?

The cabinet set commissioning for the 2030-31 financial year. No construction start date has been announced yet.

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Source: Sambad English