SHIMLA: Three mega hydropower plants in Himachal Pradesh remained shut for the fourth consecutive day on Friday due to high silt level, triggering power shortage in the northern states.
HT FILEKarchamWangtoo hydropower project in Kinnaur district has shut its power generation units as excessive silt in Sutlej river may damage the turbines.
1,500 megawatt (MW) Nathpa-Jhakri and 1,091MW Karcham-Wangtoo, both located in Kinnaur, had shut operations on Monday.
The silt level in Sutlej got inaptly high and varied from 26,000 particles per million (ppm) to 65,000 ppm against the permissible limit of 5,000 ppm. Jindal Steel Work (JSW) promoted Karcham-Wangtoo power project resumed its operation on Friday afternoon but closed down again after silt level rose in evening.
“There was heavy rain in the catchment area of Sutlej and silt level is still very high,” a JSW official said, adding that, “If need be, we will release water from the dam to flush out silt.”
Electricity generation is still suspended at 412MW Rampur hydel project.
“There is a possibility of water being released from the reservoirs of Nathpa-Jhakri hydro station, which will increase the water level in Sutlej downstream dam at Nathpa,” said Shimla additional district magistrate GC Negi.
“There is outage of 800 to 1,000MW. Hopefully, the projects will resume operations tomorrow,” said Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board system operations chief engineer Suneel Grover.