Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh government has started generation of hydel power from the Nagarjunasagar project mainly to meet its power requirement and avoid water going waste into the sea, from Wednesday.
Water resources authorities said that the upstream Srisailam project is filled to its capacity with current storage of 215.08 tmc ft water, 99.66 per cent of the gross capacity of 215.81 tmcft. They are getting inflow of 1.35 lakh cusecs into the Nagarjunasagar project which has 308.05 tmc ft or 98.95 per cent of gross capacity of 312.05 tmc ft.
“Instead of draining out the surplus water into the sea, we have started operation of two units with each one having the capacity of 30mw, taking the total power generation to the tune of 50-60mw against the installed capacity of 90mw with three units,” they said.
Nearly 5,000 cusecs of water is being drawn from the project for power generation. They are expecting the water levels to dip in upstream projects in the next two days and may continue power generation at Nagarjunasagar project for four to five days. “We may go for full capacity at 90mw, depending on the inflow of water into the project,” the officials said.
The water drawn for power generation is being released into the Right Main Canal stretching a length of nearly 200km in parts of Guntur and Prakasam districts, having its command area of 12 lakh hectares.
The water resources officials maintain that as per the resolution passed in the recently held irrigation advisory board meeting, they are supposed to release water from the Nagarjunasagar project to RMC for drinking purposes from August 15 and for irrigation needs from September 1.
However, to avoid wastage of water into the sea, they will release water used for power generation into the canal so that downstream tank-like Bugga Vagu having the capacity to store 3.4 tmcft of water will be filled up along with other such water storage facilities.
The authorities are confident that the KRMB will not take the quantum of water being released into RMC for count as AP’s share. “We are using only the surplus flood water from the Nagarjunasagar project for power generation and releasing such water into the RMC,” the officials stressed.
AP Nagarjunasagar project chief engineer Srinivasulu Reddy said, “We have started hydel power generation from the Nagarjunasagar project to meet our power needs and we are also keen on avoiding a situation of water going waste into the sea. As downstream projects like Pulichinthala and Prakasam barrage are also filled to capacity, there is no chance of storing the surplus water in them.”
With this, AP is generating hydel power from two projects— Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar. Macherla YSRC MLA Ramakrishna Reddy, chief engineer Srinivasulu Reddy and section engineer Purushottama Ganga Raju ceremoniously switched on the Nagarjunasagar power plant.
