Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government on Thursday signed a MoU with state-owned National Hydro-Power Corporation (NHPC) for setting up three hydel units down Hirakud reservoir at an investment of Rs 3,000 crore. The MoU signified formation of a joint venture company (JVC) between the state-owned Odisha Hydro Power Corporation (OHPC) and NHPC for implementation of Sindol-1 (100 MW), Sindol-II (100 MW) and Sindol-III (120MW) hydro-electric project in the first phase. The MoU was signed among the energy secretary G Mathivathanan, OHPC managing director Sahadev Khatua and NHPC's CMD A B L Srivastav in the presence of chief minister Naveen Patnaik, energy minister Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak, finance minister Prafulla Chandra Ghadei and chief secretary Bijay Kumar Patnaik at the State Secretariat here. Briefing newsmen after the meeting, the chief minister said that the three units, with least impact on environment and least inconvenience to public as compared to thermal power projects can be constructed in four years. We need to work hard to install more hydro-power generation stations as they are cheapest and eco-friendly, the chief minister added. The three projects under the JVC would be set up in the downstream of river Mahanadi in Sambalpur, Sonepur and Boudh districts with zero displacement and no damage to the local ecology, the chief minister said. While NHPC would have 51 percent stake in the JVC, OHPC's share is 49 percent, the chief secretary said, adding that the state would get 12 percent free power from these projects and 1 percent of the cost of power generation is to be spent on peripheral development activities. The remaining 87 percent of power could be sold in open market, he said hailing it as an effort to build Odisha as a hub of power generation. The state government had earlier signed MoUs with 29 private companies for setting up thermal power units with installed capacity of 50,000 MW of power. This apart, the chief secretary said that the state-owned Odisha Power Generation Corporation (OPGC) and a joint venture company between OHPC and Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) were also setting up power generation units. Even as the state government had taken several steps for establishment of several thermal power stations, MoU with NHPC was significant as it was central PSU's first hydro-power generation project in Odisha, the finance minister said. While the state is endowed with plenty of water resources, it had so far installed hydro-power generation capacity of only 2,142 MW.