Hydro power units run to full capacity, thanks to heavy rain in west

As on Monday, the storage at the hydel reservoirs was about 2,174 Million Units as against its full reservoir storage capacity of 2,439 MU. On the same day last year, the reservoirs had a storage of mere 1,647 MU. The reservoir storage meant that the Tangedco can generate this much energy in future.

Since April 1, hydro power stations generated 3,405 MU as against 4,132 MU in the corresponding period last year. Tangedco has fixed a modest target of 3890 Million Units for 2019-20 of hydro generation even though it achieved generation of 5281 MU in 2018-19. For the last year, the discom had set a target of 3570 MU.

In the Niligiris group of hydel reservoirs, Pykara’s storage stood at 296 MU on Monday as against its full reservoir storage of 365 MU. While the storage in Kundah stood at 1,077 MU as against total storage of 1158 MU. The total storage of Nilgiri group stood at 1,373 MU on Monday while the reservoirs except The Niligris remained at 590 MU and Mettur at 210 MU.

With the northeast monsoon remaining active, Tangedco officials said that they are hopeful that the storage may go up further. “The hydro generation was mainly used during the peak hours. It provides flexibility in grid operations when there is a steep rise in the power demand or sudden outage of thermal or drop in wind power generation,” the official said, adding that the hydro power generation would be normally high during the monsoon months when the reservoirs would receive heavy inflows. “During the non-monsoon months, the hydro generation would happen at the time of release of water for irrigation purpose,” the official said.