Rise in flood to Jurala from 2,000 cusecs at 6 a.m. to 34,000 cusecs at 9 p.m. on Saturday with the help of supplementation of water released from Sannati Barrage across Bhima river in Karnataka has enabled Telangana State Power Generation Corporation (TS-Genco) to take up hydel generation in the 6×39 megawatt power station at Jurala.
The Genco authorities switched on one unit after 8 p.m. on Saturday. This is likely to allow them to commence generation at the 6x40 MW Lower Jurala hydel station too soon. Last year, the Lower Jurala hydel station was switched on first on July 5 with the supplementation of water from rivulets joining Krishna in the downstream of Jurala project. Generation at Jurala commenced five days later.
Engineers at Jurala stated that the project was getting flood mainly from Bhima with some supplementation from the local catchment areas too. In the upstream of Jurala, flood to Almatti increased to 1.11 lakh cusecs on Saturday night and the storage increased to 48.5/129.7 tmc ft leaving a flood cushion of about 80.5 tmc ft.
According to Central Water Commission (CWC) authorities, about 15 cm each rainfall has been occurring in Mahabaleshwar area, the catchment for Krishna and many of its tributaries for the last three days. They indicated rise in water levels in Upper Bhima, Upper Krishna and their tributaries due to rains in Pune, Satara and Kolhapur.
In another upstream sub-basin of Krishna, flood to Tungabhadra project was up to over 40,000 cusecs on Saturday night and its storage approaching 20 tmc ft mark against its capacity of 105.8 tmc ft. Increase in flood to Almatti, Ujjani, Tungabhadra projects in the upstream improves the possibility of inflows to Jurala and Srisailam projects.
In the Godavari Basin, the intensity of flood is higher from Medigadda, where Pranahita joins Godavari. In the upstream, flood to Sriramsagar is on the decline and was at 1.05 lakh cusecs at 10 p.m. on Saturday, with storage at 58.36/90.31 tmc ft. Flood to Yellampally from Kaddam and other rivulets is steady at about 2.5 lakh cusecs with a trend of decline.
