With fresh flood, Hydel stations generate power to full capacity
Hyderabad: Thanks to fresh floods in Krishna river, the hydel power generation stations are generating power to their full capacity and providing energy at cheaper rate to the distribution companies.
The river is witnessing floods for the second time in the past 40 days. The flood reached to 3 lakh cusecs on Wednesday and the water is released to downstream. The main reservoirs on Krishna, Jurala, Srisailam and Nagarjuna Sagar are already full with water due to the flood in the first week of August as the flood reached to 8 lakh cusecs.
The Irrigation officials have no way out than releasing the water to downstream. After filling the reservoirs to the brim, the officials of Irrigation department have begun to release the water downstream for few days. They allowed the TS Genco to use the released waster to generate hydel power this week.
In August, the Genco officials produced about 47 MU of power at Srisailam, Nagarjuna Sagar, Jurala and Pulichintala for few days. The total installed capacity of hydel stations is 2,242 MW and with this about 54 MUs could be produced. However, they have been producing up to 48 MUs.
The power generation at the hydel stations reached to the peak on September 10 as 48 MUs of power was produced. It is the highest hydel power generation in this season.
According to Genco officials, the flood would continue for the next two or three days and the power generation would be continued to the full capacity till the flood remains.
The officials said that power generation through the hydel stations would be stopped as soon as the flood stops and it would be taken up in the peak hours. The generation at hydel stations had gone down to 3 MUs per day after flood stopped in the last week of August.
The hydel power generation crossed 1,000 MU from April to September of this year and half of it has been generated at Srisailam reservoir. Power generation at hydel stations has been saving precious amount of money for the distribution companies as they were able to get power at cheaper prices.
Nagarjuna Sagar and Srisailam would allow producing about 1,900 MU more power till April next year. The hydel power generation would be taken sparingly keeping the demand in view.
On September 10, the total power consumption in the State was 205 MUs and the hydel stations supplied 20 per cent of it. The Genco, with the help of its hydel and thermal stations, produced about 102 MUs.