Vijayawada: The Srisailam Dam is likely to get filled to its brim by Wednesday evening and APGenco is getting ready to generate hydroelectric power there.
Following heavy rainfall in catchment areas of Krishna river upstream in parts of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana, the river is getting good inflow and water is filling up upstream projects like Jurala and Sunkesula in Telangana.
This is resulting in an inflow of nearly four lakh cusecs of water into the Srisailam reservoir. Water level in the reservoir reached 876.20ft against 885ft, with the gross storage capacity at FRL of 215.81tmc-ft of water and the current storage of water registered at 169.47tmc-ft (78.53 per cent).
Water resource authorities say the reservoir is getting four lakh cusecs of water from Jurala and 95,000 cusecs from the Sunkesula project. The authorities are hopeful the dam gets filled to its capacity if the same trend in water inflow continued till Wednesday evening.
They say that once the dam gets filled to its capacity, they will start lifting the dam gates one after another at a height of 10ft, out of the total 12 gates, to release water downstream.
Meanwhile, APGenco has written to KRMB, seeking its permission to allow generation of hydroelectric power from Srisailam power plant, it having an installed capacity of 770mw with seven units as the reservoir is getting good inflow of water.
Officials are expecting permission from KRMB and are ready to start power generation anytime from Tuesday night, initially with one or two power generation units.
The Telangana government is already generating power from Srisailam project by operating four units of 150mw capacity each, out of the total installed capacity of 600mw and drawing nearly 35,000 cusecs of water for the purpose.
The AP government will also draw 35,000 to 45,000 cusecs of water from the Srisailam reservoir to generate power and discharge such water downstream into the river, which will reach Nagarjunasagar Dam.
The water level in Nagarjunasagar reservoir is also rising slowly. Out of the gross capacity at FRL of 312.05tmc-ft of water, it is having 187.29tmc-ft of water (60.02 per cent) with an inflow of nearly 35,000 cusecs of water.
Srisailam Dam superintendening engineer Venkata Ramanaiah said, “We are expecting the water level in the dam to reach its full capacity by Wednesday evening. We will lift one or two gates to release water downstream and we have also sought permission from KRBM to allow power generation. We are awaiting its nod.”
Meanwhile, water resource authorities have ruled out any impact like a minor earthquake of magnitude of 3.7 on Richter scale at upstream foreshore located nearly 44km away, on the dam as the NGRI is monitoring the scene through the seismograph at the dam.
They also say that with Srisailam reservoir getting good inflow of water, it will help in release of water to Pothireddypadu reservoir which in turn helps further release of water downstream into canals and to fill up tanks to help farmers take up cultivation of crops.
However, they point out that Srisailam reservoir should have good inflow of water for nearly 60 days to ensure supply of adequate water for cultivation of crops in its command area.
