Kaleswaram project ready to take off

Hyderabad: Kaleswaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP), among the biggest lift irrigation projects in the world, is all set for inauguration on June 21, 2019 at Medigadda in Jayashankar Bhupalpally district. Apart from the Telangana government which wanted the project to be completed on a war-footing, infrastructure majors like MEIL also played key role in the construction of the mega project.

Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited (MEIL), a leading infrastructure company based out of Hyderabad, has completed the construction on a FastTrack mode and the construction has been completed in record time. All the civil and electro-mechanical works in Medigadda to Mid-Maneru link-1 and link-2 have been completed, said the infrastructure major in a statement.

The company installed 105 machines out of 120 machines and constructed 17 pump houses out of 20 in entire Rs 80,000-crore KLIP. Medigadda, Annaram, Sundilla (Link 1) pumphouses along with the world's biggest pumphouse at Lakshmipur (Package 8 in Link 2) are ready for pumping water. The KLIP project will provide irrigation water to 37.08 lakh acres of land. Besides, another 18.82 lakh acres of command area will be stabilized with it.

B Srinivas Reddy, Director, MEIL, said: "It has a privilege and lifetime opportunity to be able to bring the plan from print to reality. We have successfully engineered the world's biggest pumping scheme in India. To achieve that, we used world-class technology involving the best agencies that have delivered quality. We at MEIL believe that quality and timely delivery of projects are the benchmarks to our success."

This is by far the first of its kind and the largest lift scheme in the world. The project requires 7152 MW of electricity to pump 3 TMCs of water daily. In the first phase, 4992 MWs of electricity is being used for pumping 2 TMCs of water," he added.

Till date, the biggest lift schemes in the world were The Colorado lift scheme in America and the Great Manmade River in Egypt. The capacities of these schemes are in horsepower and they took over three decades for completion. Now, the Kaleswaram project, an Indian lift scheme, has become the world's biggest in terms of capacities.

Many other lift irrigation projects have also been completed and maintained by MEIL across India. It completed Pattiseema project record-breaking time and got a place in "Limca Book of World Records" for that achievement. It also completed Handri-Neeva lift scheme in 2012 and maintaining it without any single problem ever since.

Records galore in pump houses

A total of 43 machines are being established for Medigadda, Annaram and Sundilla Pump Houses, each having 40 MWs capacity. These three pump houses consume nearly 1,720 MWs of electricity. The underground pump house in the package-8 will have 7 units, out of which 5 machines are ready to pump 2 tmc of water per day.

Each one of these machines is having the world's biggest pumping machines with a capacity of 139 MWs. This underground pump house itself would consume 973 MWs of electricity. MEIL is also establishing four machines in Package -11, each with a capacity of 135 MWs. Four machines each with a capacity of 106 MW are being installed in Package -10. And another 7 machines, each with a capacity of 124 MW are in Package-6.

During 2018-19, the amount of work completed is really a world record in terms of execution in pump houses. Nearly 177 lakhs CuM worth of earthworks were completed for Medigadda Scheme. On average, MEIL completed one lakh CuM of earthwork per day. In the same way, 8.62 lakh CuM of concrete work was completed in just 22 months.

Completing 1310 CuM of concrete work for a lift scheme and laying 39,700 tonnes of underground pipes in 18 months is another distinction. MEIL established 6 machines at Medigadda in just 10 months, which is the shortest time frame in the world.

Package-8 Pumping Station: Unique in underground engineering

The Package-8 pumping station can lift 3 TMCs of water per day. It is constructed 330 meters below the ground and is the only one consisting of such a gigantic underground pumping station with 7 units, each having a capacity of 139 MWs.

The depth of the pumping station was calculated based on various technical and scientific parameters. The machines supplied by BHEL are developed with robust engineering and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technology which helps in overcoming even complex situations.

"The uniqueness of this pump house lies in its twin tunnels, which have been constructed side by side by excavating the earth with a diameter of 10.5 meters, each having a length of 4133 meters. Surge pool and additional surge pools of this pump house are also the biggest in the world. This is the first time such constructions have been made under the ground. One can imagine the size of the pump house that has 330 metres depth, 25 metres width and 65 metres of height," said Srinivas Reddy.

Unique power infrastructure

Nearly 7,152 MWs of electricity is required for lifting 3 tmc of water per day. This equals the total demand/consumption of electricity in most Indian states. MEIL completed construction of electrical infrastructure with 3,057 MWs capacity that includes six 400KV and 220 KV sub-stations, transformers and 260 kilometers of transmission lines, 7 kms of 400 KV XLPE under ground cable etc. This huge electrical infrastructure has been established for providing drinking water and irrigation purposes in the world.