HYDERABAD: The Telangana State Power Generation Corporation Limited (TS Genco) on Sunday constituted a five-member committee of senior officials, to inquire into the fire accident that occurred on Thursday night at the Srisailam Left Bank Hydro Electric Scheme (SLBHES), which claimed the lives of seven engineers and two private employees.
The committee has been tasked with furnishing a detailed report within 15 days, on the causes and circumstances that led to the fire accident, along with specific recommendations and measures to be taken to prevent such accidents in the future.
The committee consists of G Raghuma Reddy, C Srinivas Rao, and T Jagath Reddy serving as CMD, JMD and Director (Transmission) of Transco along with M Sachidanandam and P Ratnakar, serving as Director (Projects) and Chief Engineer (Generation) with TS Genco.
Speaking to media, D Prabhakar Rao, CMD of TS Transco & TS Genco said that the committee would look into the reasons behind why the system at the power station did not trip after the fire, despite an automatic system being in place for the purpose and even after the engineers, who perished in fire trying to manually trip it.
Regarding the incident, Rao said that soon after the fire was noticed, the operators tried to extinguish the fire but could not do it following which they informed the load dispatch. After this, the power lines outside the plant were isolated and tripped.
He also said that the fire started from sixth power generation unit and spread across the plant. At the same time, power supply lines also tripped, the plant got engulfed in darkness and smoke filled the entire plant resulting in the death of the trapped personnel.
Regarding some allegations that the plant had problems that were ignored, Rao said that since the past 30-40 days the plant had been functioning and each unit of 1,590MW capacity was generating 130-140MW and everyday around 20 million units of power was being generated. He also said that just around 15 days ago, he and another senior official had inspected the plant.
He added that the plant had some water that leaks into it as it was an underground station and pumps had been put in place to remove the accumulated water.
Rao said the Srisailam power plant coming to a halt would not affect the power availability in the State. He said at present the power demand was low in the State and due to good inflows in Nagarjuna Sagar power was being generated there.