Shali Vahana Green Energy is setting up a 20 MW rice husk based power plant at Nimidha village in Dhenkanal district of Orissa.

The company is one of the eight developers who have signed MoU with the Orissa Renewable Energy Development Agency (OREDA), the nodal agency to promote renewable energy in the state, for bio-mass based power projects with aggregate production capacity of 90 MW.

So far, the company has completed more than half of the construction work and currently, the construction of the boiler is underway. The Orissa Government hopes to get the power generated from this plant by July 2010.

The other developers who have signed MoU are Satya Bio-Power Industry is likely to set up a 10 MW plant in Ganjam, AVN Power Projects setting up a 10 MW power plant in Kalahandi district and Prasad Bio-Energy planning a 10 MW unit in Raygada.

While Jaylaxmi Bio-Energy intends to set up a 10 MW plant in Nayagarh, another plant of similar capacity by Andhavarapu Bio-Energy is expected to be set up in Nawarangpur.

Besides, the State Technical Committee has approved the setting up of two more such projects with a combined generation capacity of 39 MW. This is expected to take the envisaged generation capacity in the bio-mass sector of the state to 129 MW.