Comments
Heavy rains in the catchment areas of major reservoirs in Andhra Pradesh has lead to copious inflows into Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar dams, forcing dam and irrigation authorities to release water downstream.
Rains in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in the past few days has further boosted the near-full reservoirs of Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar allowing them to continue to generate power but also forcing them to let out water downstream by lifting crest gates.
According to sources in the irrigation department, Srisailam reservoir, which is at its full reservoir level of 885 feet has been receiving 1,97,302 cusses and is releasing about 2,02,653 cusecs downstream to Nagarjunasagar.
As per the reservoir Storage Monitoring System, Nagarjunasagar dam has officials were alerted on Wednesday about heavy inflows and were asked to release water downstream. Sixteen crest gates of Nagarjunasagar, which also attained full reservoir level of 590 feet, were lifted to let out about 1.45 lakh cusecs.
The water flow from Nagarjunasagar has been quite heavy and the water from other sources joining has also forced irrigation authorities to lift all the 70 gates at the Prakasham barrage, the last point where water is impounded before letting it out into the sea.
Water from Tungabhadra dam and the Pennar river system is also reaching the Somasila project. This was the only reservoir where water inflows were low during June, July and August when other reservoirs received heavy flows.
As per the river monitoring system, the Somasila dam is receiving about 23,265 cusecs on Thursday and the water level in the dam has reached 306.6 feet as against full reservoir level of 330 feet. The current storage at Somasila is 37.8 tmc as against gross capacity of 73.898 tmc. With continued flow, this dam is also likely to fill up soon.
Some of the dams on the Godavari river are also receiving good inflows in the State.
With continued water inflows into reservoirs, the hydel power generation in the State has significantly gone up to 61 million units per day, as against 26 MUs same day last year. The hydel power is now working out to a fourth of the overall State energy requirement of about 240 MUs per day. AP Genco expects to cross its targeted power generation of about 6,755 MUs this year.
> rishikumar.vundi@thehindu.co.in
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.