Shimla, May 11 (IANS) The commercial operations of Jaypee Group's 1,000 MW hydropower project in Himachal Pradesh's Kinnaur district will partially start May 15, an official said here Wednesday.

"The Karcham-Wangtoo hydro project, located on the Satluj river near Rekong Peo, will start generating electricity May 15," a spokesperson for Jaypee Karacham Hydropower, the company executing the project, told IANS.

He said initially one turbine of 250 MW would start generating power. The other three turbines of the same generation capacity would be operational in the next few months.

Constructed with an outlay of around Rs.7,000 crore, the project would be made fully operational by Aug 15.

The company claims that the project's optimum generation would be around 4,000 million units annually. The state is also entitled to get a royalty of 12 percent free power from the project.

This would be the company's third hydro project in the country. The others are the 300 MW Baspa project located upstream of Karcham-Wangtoo in the state and the 400 MW Vishnuprayag project in Uttarakhand.

The Karcham-Wangtoo run-of-the river project, located some 250 km from here, was allotted by the government in August 1993. The company got the environment and forest clearance in 2002 and techno-economic clearance in 2003. It will be commissioned six months in advance.

It's located upstream of the 1,500 MW Nathpa Jhakri power project of the Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Ltd (SJVNL) -- a joint venture between the central government and the Himachal government.

Himachal Pradesh has abundant water resources with a power generation potential of about 23,560 MW. About 6,673 MW have been harnessed till now by the central and state governments, private players and joint venture companies.