KADAPA: With the water levels of reservoirs supplying to Rayalaseema Thermal Power Project (RTPP) coming down significantly, alarm bells are ringing among the RTPP authorities. This water depletion could cause fall in power generation this summer.
The authorities say that though there is a provision of continuous water supply from Brahmamsagar through pipelines to the RTPP, damages due to pilferage by farmers is posing a huge challenge. As a result, the water supply is affected “We had to repair the pipelines and restore supply from Brahmamsagar. If there are damages again due to pilferage, the power generation would be badly affected,” said RTPP Superintendent Engineer S Sesha Reddy.
RTPP generates1050 mega watts of electricity from its five units each with 210 mega watts production capacity. Earlier, RTPP used to get water from Mylavaram reservoir. During the regime of YS Rajasekhar Reddy, Brahmamsagar water began to be used for the project. Pipeline was laid for 68 km at a cost of `140 crore. Some 38 cusecs of water was being released from Brahmamsagar into the two reservoirs of RTPP, which can store up to 6 lakh cubic meters of water. Recently, the pipeline at Chinnadandluru near Proddutur was damaged due to searing heatwave conditions. Similarly, pipelines near Pennar river too were broken. Both the pipelines could be repaired only after two days. Due to this, huge amount of water was lost.
Recently, farmers damaged a pipeline at Brahmamgari Matham. Due to this disruption, the RTPP officials were forced to use the reservoir water. As a result, the water level has gone down to 2.7 meters.
The RTPP officials have requested SP Navin Gulati and Proddutur DSP Pujitha Neelam to provide security all along the pipelines from Brahmamsagar to RTPP, “We have also conducted awareness campaigns among the farmers. We told them that such actions could affect the power generation due to which the whole state would suffer,” Sesha Reddy said.