The State government has given the nod to Ballari Thermal Power Station (BTPS) at Kuditini near Ballari to draw water from the low-level canal on the right bank of Tungabhadra reservoir to ensure power production is not hit. Drought and shortage of water to the units had affected power generation.
A decision on this was taken at a high-level committee meeting in Bengaluru on Saturday with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in the chair.
BTPS, having three units with installed capacity of generating around 1,700 MW of power, has been facing severe water crisis this year. It has shut its 700 MW unit and has been generating power through the two other units of 500 MW each. The available water in its impounding reservoir was expected to last for about two months to run two units.
Official sources in BTPS told The Hindu that the nod was a stopgap arrangement to enable BTPS to meet its immediate water requirement until the project to draw 2.34 tmcft from Narayanpur reservoir was completed. BTPS’ main source of water is Maralihalla in Gangavati taluk where the regenerated water was being pumped since inception in 2007. This year, due to failure of rain, the augmentation of water in Tungabhadra dam at Hosapete was very low and regeneration of water at Maralihalla was affected. Prior to this to help BTPS, the government had permitted drawing water from the high-level canal passing adjacently to BTPS, which enabled it to draw 0.3 tmcft until the canal was closed.
Meanwhile, the process of preparing a detailed project report for laying pipeline from Narayanpur reservoir to BTPS was under way and would soon be forwarded to the government for approval, sources said.
