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Saturday, Jun 21, 2008
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State saved from “grid collapse”

Special Correspondent

Power generation at Srisailam restarted on an emergency basis

HYDERABAD: The Srisailam hydel project, which was shut down last week for a month to facilitate repairs to the apron of the dam, was reopened on Friday for power generation to improve line frequency and save the State from a “grid collapse”.

The line frequency nosedived on Thursday and precariously hovered around 48 cycles per second off and on as against the safe level of 49.5 cycles a second, threatening to trip all the power stations in a chain effect and plunge the State into darkness.

The AP Transco secured special permission from the government and restarted the generation at Srisailam on an emergency basis to pump extra power into the grid and build up the frequency which then rose to the safe level.

The repairs being undertaken to the apron of the Srisailam dam have been kept on hold temporarily to continue the operation of Srisailam right and left bank powerhouses which together have a huge installed capacity of 1,670 MW.

At a press conference, Energy Minister Mohd Ali Shabbir expressed happiness that the crisis was averted with the timely operation of the Srisailam powerhouses. He said in spite of the onset of monsoon, the power demand continued at summer level in all the sectors, including agriculture and domestic, due to the dry spell, causing a shortage of 10-15 million units a day.

As against this gap, Srisailam provided 13 mu on Thursday evening.

Mr. Shabbir, however, assured the power cut would not be imposed on any category of consumers under any circumstances.

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