Water release at Tungabhadra dam to help more hydel generation in Telangana, A.P.
The washing away of 19th crest gate on the spillway of Tungabhadra Dam, an inter-State project located in Karnataka, late on Saturday night due to the snapping of the chain link used for its operation and the resultant release of water from other gates too is likely to help Telangana and Andhra Pradesh generate more hydro-electric power.
“It’s an unfortunate incident forcing the Tungabhadra Dam Board authorities to take up emptying the reservoir by lifting more gates to reduce the hydraulic pressure on the open vent of the spillway to regulate the discharge and to take the storage down to 40-45 tmcft from its full capacity of 105.79 tmcft at the time of the incident for installation of the new gate,” a senior engineer of the Irrigation Department said.
As the projects downstream such as Srisailam, Nagarjunasagar and Pulichintala in the two Telugu States have reached full reservoir level and discharging whatever flood they are getting from upstream, the water from Tungabhadra could be best put to use for hydro-electric generation, the most economical energy as it is the most cost-effective method.
The engineer, who handled the historic flood to Srisailam project in 2009, said despite the forced release of water from the Tungabhadra dam, the inflow to Srisailam would be much lesser than the peak flood, combined flood from the Tungabhadra and Jurala projects and some smaller tributaries which join Krishna and Tungabhadra river courses in the upstream of Srisailam, recorded this year of about 5 lakh cusecs.
The senior engineer explained that Srisailam dam had handled the highest recorded ever in its history of about 25 lakh cusecs on October 3, 2009, when Jurala contributed about half of the flood volume and the rest by Tungabhadra, Handri and a few other tributaries. This year, spillway discharge at Srisailam was taken up on July 29 and at Nagarjunsagar downstream it commenced on August 5 and it has been going on since then in different volumes based on the inflows.
However, the discharge of flood at Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar has been gradually reduced since Saturday night. Now that water release from Tungabhadra is on the rise the spillway discharge at the two downstream projects is also likely to be increased accordingly.
According to the Telangana State Power Generation Ltd. (TG-Genco) authorities, the power generation at Jurala, Lower Jurala, Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar in July was 235.83 million units and from August 1 to 10,it is 355.91 million units with generation added at NS Left Canal and Pulichintala. Similarly, the AP-Genco generated 93.3 MU at Nagarjunasagar in July and from August 1 to 10, it was 120.74 MU with the addition of generation at NS Right Canal and Tail-pond.
Read Comments
- Copy link
- Telegram
READ LATER
Remove
SEE ALL
PRINT