VIJAYAWADA: As Andhra Pradesh is facing an impending power crisis due to short supply of coal, generation of hydel power mainly from Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar projects has given some relief as they are filled with water to the brim.
Following rainfall in the catchment areas of the Krishna river for the last few days, several projects on the river from upstream to downstream are receiving huge inflows of water and they are expected to continue for some more days as rainfall is expected further.
The Srisailam reservoir has a current water storage of 215.08 tmcft (99.66 percent) against gross capacity at FRL of 215.81 tmcft with an inflow of 1.68 lakh cusecs and 1.85 lakh cusecs as outflow. With water level maintained at 884.91 ft against FRL of 885 ft in the reservoir, the state government is generating hydel power by running all the seven power units with a capacity of 650 mw to generate 15 million units per day.
The Srisailam right bank hydroelectric power scheme superintending engineer M. Srinivas said, “As we have good inflow of water into the reservoir, we have started generation of hydel power in the last few days and it gives some relief to tide over power crisis in the state. We will continue to generate hydel power as long as water level allows in the reservoir and also based on power requirements to the state.”
Nagarjunasagar reservoir is also maintaining current water storage at 311.15 tmcft against gross capacity at FRL of 312.05 tmcft (99.71 percent) with inflow of 1.58 lakh cusecs and outflow of 1.58 lakh cusecs of water. The current water level in the reservoir is registered at 589.70 ft against FRL of 590 ft. On the right main canal, three power units of 30 mw capacity are located and at present, nearly 61 mw units of power is being generated. At Satrasala Tailend Project, nearly 50 mw of power is being generated and both the projects put together, nearly 2.25 million units of hydel power is being generated per day.
Meanwhile, AP gets a major share of hydel power from the Sileru project on the Godavari and from several other projects.
A look at the power supply position in AP on Tuesday shows that it has an installed power capacity of 19,862 mw and energy requirement is 183.894 million units and out of it, 182.613 million units of power is being met at present with short supply pegged at minus 1.281 million units. Out of installed capacity of Genco thermal power of 5,010 mw, current generation is 49.796 mw and out of 1,728 mw of hydel power, current generation is 26.467 mw. AP gets 40.443 mw of power from purchases, 4.909 mw from gas and 63.889 mw from other sources.
