Full Krishna, Godavari dams bring cheer

Heavy rain in the catchment areas of the Krishna and the Godavari river networks is filling up dams in Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, while boosting the hydel power generation.

Most of the dams on the Krishna river, lifeline for many districts cross three States – Thungabhadra, Almatti and Narayanpur – have filled up, releasing water downstream into Jurala and Srisailam dams.

Water release

Jurala has already filled up, and Srisailam is on the verge of hitting the brim, and set to release water downstream into Nagarjunasagar. With copious inflows from several sources into Jurala and then into Srisailam, irrigation authorities in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have been forced to release water for generation of electricity.

According to the data from Reservoir Storage Monitoring System, the Srisailam dam has been receiving inflows of 2,38,977 cusecs and releasing the same amount downstream by lifting crest gates into the Nagarjunasagar dam. The Srisailam reservoir level has shot up to 882.1 feet as against the full reservoir level of 885 feet, with its storage going up to 199.74 tmc ft as against full storage capacity of 215 tmc ft.

The Nagarjunsagar dam, which had poor inflows in the monsoon season till last week, causing alarm, has seen huge inflows lately with the dam storage level going up to 548.4 ft as against FRL of 590 feet and the storage was up at 207 tmc ft as against full storage capacity of 312 tmc ft.

Reversible pumps

TS Genco has put into operation the reversible pumping facility at Nagarjunasagar hydel generating station for the first time. Using this station, it has been pumping back water into the main reservoir. This is useful for grid management and to meet peak demand. During the off-peak period, pumping is being carried out by using hydel power and this pumped water is utilised for generation during the peak hours.

Last year, about 25.5 tmc ft of water was pumped back into Srisailam reservoir using reversible pumping facility at Srisailam left bank hydel generating station. The water is utilised to meet peak demand. This flexibility of reverse pumping system at Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar hydel power houses has resulted in substantial savings thereby minimising the costly purchases during the peak hours, according to D Prabhakar Rao, CMD of TS Genco and TS Transco.

Godavari in spate

Meanwhile, on the Godavari river network, the dams in Telangana, including the Sriramsagar project, are on on the verge of getting filled up. The flood water has hampered the construction work on the mega Kaleshwaram project in Telangana and Polavaram in Andhra Pradesh.

While there have been reports of submergence of crop in some parts of both the States, the filling up of dams augurs well for both kharif and rabi operations later and meeting the drinking water requirement.

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