Shares of Torrent Power surged as much as 8.8% to hit a 52-week high of ₹666, a day after the company inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Maharashtra for three hydro projects worth ₹27,000 crore.

On Wednesday, the scrip opened higher at ₹634.35, higher than the closing price of the previous session at ₹611.65. At 11:24 am, the share price was trading 7.55% higher at ₹657.85. At present, the shares of Torrent Pharma are trading 54.8% higher than the 52-week low of ₹430.90, which the company touched on January 30 this year. During the session, the company’s market capitalisation stood at ₹31,590.94 crore with 1,26,982 shares exchanging hands on the BSE as against the two-week average of 0.26 lakh shares. In the past one month, three months and one year, the counter has given 21.25%, 25.84% and 43.5% in returns, respectively.

According to the company, Torrent Power will develop three pumped storage hydro projects of 5,700 MW (megawatt) capacity in Maharashtra. The projects would entail an investment of about ₹27,000 crores and would provide employment to approximately 13,500 people during the construction period. Torrent intends to execute these projects over a period of 5 years.

The projects would be executed at three sites identified by Torrent namely Karjat (3,000 MW) in Raigarh District, Maval, (1,200 MW) and Junnar (1,500 MW) in Pune District. All the sites are off-stream and the projects are planned to provide a minimum of six hours of energy storage on a daily basis.

"Pumped Storage Hydro is an established, proven and cost-effective technology for firm, flexible and dispatchable power. PSH is a configuration of two water reservoirs at different elevations. Water is pumped to the upper reservoir at the time of excess power when it is the cheapest. At the time of demand when power is expensive, water flow from the upper reservoir to the lower reservoir generates power with a hydraulic turbine. PSH is a much superior solution than Battery for energy storage as it is cheaper, has a longer life of 40 years, provides longer duration storage of 6 to 10 hours with the feasibility of multiple cycle operations during the day," the company said.

Torrent Power currently has an aggregate installed generation capacity of ~4.1 GW (gigawatt), which consists largely of clean generation sources such as gas (2.7 GW) and renewables (1.07 GW). It also has a renewable capacity of 0.7 GW under development. "Torrent's growth focus in Power Generation remains on renewables. To complement its growing portfolio of renewables and distribution, Torrent is strategically entering the storage space to fulfil the void left in the grid by intermittent renewable power,” the company said.

Torrent Power, with a turnover of ₹25,694 crore, is the integrated power utility of the diversified Torrent Group with group revenue of ₹37,500 crore and group market cap of approximately ₹87,000 crore.

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Torrent Power's hydro projects

Torrent Power hits 52-week high after inking MoU with Maharashtra for 3 hydro projects