Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited (MEIL) has completed the construction of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation project on the Godavari river. It is set for inauguration by Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Thursday.

Considered to be an engineering marvel, the project has been completed in a record time and all the civil and electro-mechanical works in Medigadda to Mid-Maneru Link-1 and Link-2 have been completed.

The company has installed 105 machines out of 120 machines and constructed 17 pump houses out of 20 in the Kaleshwaram project.

Pump houses at Medigadda, Annaram, Sundilla (Link 1) along with the world’s biggest pump house at Lakshmipur (Pakage 8 in Link 2) are ready for pumping water.

This irrigation project would cater water to 37 lakh acres of land and an additional 18.82 lakh acres of command area will be stabilized with the water stored through the pumping system.

B Srinivas Reddy, Director, MEIL, said, “It has been a lifetime opportunity to be able to engineer, by far, 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.”

Till date, the biggest lift schemes in the world include The Colorado lift scheme in the US and the Great Manmade River in Egypt.

MEIL completed many other irrigation and lift irrigation projects including the Pattiseema project which made it to the Limca Book of World Records and the Handri-Neeva lift scheme in 2012.

Forty three machines are being set up for Sundilla, Medigadda and Annaram pump houses, each having 40 MWs capacity and consume 1720 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 TMCs of water per day. Each pump with has capacity of 139 MWs and the underground pump house consumes 973 MWs.

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.

BHEL has designed and developed these pumps with robust engineering and computational fluid dynamics technology. “The uniqueness of this pump house lies in its twin tunnels 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. One can imagine the size of the Pump House that has 330 metres depth, 25 metres width and 65 meters of height,” Srinivas Reddy said.

Massive electrical and power infrastructure has been created to provide power to the pumping stations across several project locations.

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