June 27: The much-awaited national pride project, Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower Project, is all set to generate electricity within three weeks. According to the national news agency (RSS), it will start generating 152 megawatts electricity from July 15.    
Necessary preparations have reached the final stage for producing electricity from two units of the project within July 15, RSS reported.    
Project spokesperson Dr Ganesh Neupane said the trial run of the first unit has been conducted in the first phase and works are on for conducting the test run of the second unit. The project would be connected to the national grid after completing the works of the second unit.    
The 456-megawatt project is near completion almost 10 years after its construction was started. The project with largest domestic investment has reached the final phase of completion despite grappling with natural disasters and various other technical issues.    
Neupane said that necessary preparations are being done from June 27 to July 3 for feeding the electricity produced from the project to the national grid. According to him, works of managing the transmission line of the project have been forwarded.    
The 220-KV transmission line carrying power from the powerhouse of the Upper Tamakoshi Project is being connected to the sub-station located at New Khimti.    
Before this, preparations were made to connect the transmission line from this project to the Dhalkebar sub-station.    
The success of this project has raised hopes that other big projects could also be constructed with domestic investment.    
Although the initial cost of the project was estimated to be Rs 35 billion, it has now reached around Rs 80 billion in 10 years due to the increase in foreign exchange rate of the US Dollar and the interest rate, among other factors.