HUBLI: As part of its efforts to manage solid waste, the Hubli-Dharwad Municipal Corporation (HDMC) plans to set up small biogas plants to generate electricity, using garbage.
To begin with, one such plant will come up in Hubli at a cost of `60 lakh. The plant will generate 400 units of power every day with three tonnes of garbage. The twin-cities generate around 400 tonnes of garbage every day.
“Mailhem Engineers, a Pune-based company has already bagged the tender and the HDMC has issued the letter of acceptance to the company. The work on this plant will begin soon after the civic body signs an agreement with Mailhem Engineers,” HDMC executive engineer Suresh Chowti said.
He said the location to set up the plant has not yet been finalised and added that the HDMC was in the process of floating tenders to set up another plant with similar capacity at Dharwad.
The HDMC had initially planned to set up three such plants with a capacity of five tonnes each. However, the plan was scrapped considering the requirement of land with larger dimensions.
“As we go for higher capacity plants, we need to have bigger plots to set them up. Since the very idea of going for small plants is to avoid this problem, we have scrapped the proposal,” a senior HDMC official said.
These biogas plants are in addition to the integrated solid waste management plant planned by the HDMC at Shivalli.