Bringing relief to the power-starved States at the onset of summer, the State-run National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) announced the commissioning of all the three units of the 510 MW Teesta Stage-V Hydroelectric Project in Sikkim. Two of the three units of 170 MW each are expected to become commercially operational shortly, while the first unit is already functional. This would go a long way in bringing stability to the national grid. According to the NHPC, the cost of the project is about Rs.2,650 crore and the provisional tariff approved by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission is Rs.1.62 per unit. It will generate 2,573 million units of energy annually. Teesta-V is one of the six hydro projects identified for execution by the NHPC in Sikkim. The company has added 1,420 MW of generation capacity in the last one year with the commissioning of the 390 MW Dul-Hasti project in Jammu and Kashmir, the 520 MW Omkareshwar project in Madhya Pradesh, and Teesta-V. The run-on-river Teesta-V project will provide power to power-starved stations of Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Sikkim. Memorandum of Understanding signed In a related development, the NHPC has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Power with a challenging target to generate 17,010 million units of energy during 2008-09. For the first time, enterprise parameters such as safety, environment protection measures, certification for carbon credit, expenditure on corporate social responsibility scheme and e-procurement have been included in the MoU.