Shares of power generation and utilities companies were in focus, with the S&P BSE Power Index rising nearly 2% in intraday trade on Thursday on expectations of higher electricity demand.

At 10:06 am, the S&P BSE Power Index was up 1.64%, while the S&P BSE Sensex was up 0.14%, the second-biggest gain among sectoral indexes after Utilities.

NTPC, Adani Power NHPC, Torrent Power and Tata Power gained 3% in the index. KPI Green Energy, NLC India, Nava, Inox Green Energy Services, Power Grid Corporation and CESC were up 1%-4% among power and related companies.

Among individual stocks, NTPC hit a more than five-year high of Rs 184.30 and was up 4% on heavy volume. Shares of the state-owned power generation company were trading at their highest level since November 2017. It surpassed the previous high of Rs 182.80 on November 1, 2022.

Shares of Torrent Power hit a new high of Rs 745, surging 7% in intraday trade today. Shares of the integrated electric utility have jumped 22% in the past two sessions after the company signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Maharashtra state government to build three pumped storage hydropower projects with a capacity of 5,700 MW.

These projects will require an investment of around Rs 27,000 crore. Torrent plans to execute these projects within five years. All sites are inactive, and the project plans to provide at least 6 hours of energy storage daily.

The projects will be executed at three locations identified by Torrent, namely Karjat (3,000 MW), Maval (1,200 MW) in Raigarh district and Junnar (1,500 MW) in Pune district. All sites are inactive, and the project plans to provide at least 6 hours of energy storage daily.