KABUL (TCA) — Afghanistan’s Ministry of Water and Energy on December 11 said that two Indian companies have been selected to start the work on the CASA-1000 electricity transmission project in Afghanistan, TOLOnews reported.
The Central Asia–South Asia (CASA-1000) project will start from Kyrgyzstan and will reach Afghanistan through Tajikistan and onward to Pakistan’s Peshawar city. The length of the project in Afghanistan is 562 km.
The Indian companies are expected to begin with the installation of transmission lines within the framework of CASA-1000 in a month’s time, the ministry said.
The Afghan government is expected to invest $235 million in the implementation of the project and the Indian companies will implement the project inside Afghanistan in three phases.
The project, worth $2.1 billion, will cross seven Afghan provinces, Minister of Energy and Water, Ali Ahmad Usmani, said.
“This is not the only project which will transfer energy from Central Asia to Afghanistan and South Asia, but it is a bridge which connects the four nations in the region,” he said.
Jamshed Shoimzoda, Deputy Minister of Energy and Water of Tajikistan, said that CASA-1000 project connects the people and paves the way for the progress of countries in the region, adding that from the technical aspect, CASA-1000 is a unique project in the region.
The CASA-1000 project will include: a 500 kV AC line from Datka (in Kyrgyzstan) to Sugd-500 (477 kilometers away, in Tajikistan); 1,300 megawatt AC-DC Converter Station at Sangtuda (Tajikistan); 750-kilometer High Voltage DC line from Sangtuda (Tajikistan) to Nowshera (Pakistan); and 1,300 megawatt DC-AC Converter Station at Nowshera.
With the implementation of the project, 1300 megawatts of electricity of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will arrive in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghanistan will receive 300 megawatts of power and the remaining one thousand megawatts will be transited to Pakistan via Afghanistan territory.
Afghanistan will receive $50 million in transit duties from the project annually.
