Sardar Sarovar dam reservoir sees over 8.5 m rise in last 10 days, gross storage above 51%

Vadodara/Gandhinagar:

The Sardar Sarovar Narmada Dam reservoir, the lifeline of Gujarat’s water supply, has seen a rise over 8.5 meters in last 10 days and is still rising due to rain in the catchment area of river Narmada in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and increased inflow.

According to the Narmada project’s control room in Vadodara, the water level which had started rising from 5 am of August 17 when it was 111.08 meters has reached 119.73m at 12pm today afternoon. The inflow was 32704 cusec while the outflow was only 4544 cuses. So the water level was rising. Notably the new overflow height of the dam reservoir situated in Kevadiya in Narmada district in Central Gujarat has been raised from 121.92 to 138.48 after the installation and closure of 30 sluice gates last year.

The minimum level for functioning of the river bed as well as canal bed hydel units is 110.64 meters below which the storage in the reservoir becomes dead.

Today at 2 pm the gross storage was 4879.44 million cubic meter (MCM) against total gross storage capacity of 9545.87 MCM ie around 51% of it. The live storage was 1179.44 MCM which against total live capacity of 5845.87 MCM ie around 20% of it. The storage on August 18 at 1 pm was only 341.66 MCM.

However despite rise in level, for appropriate water storage the river-bed hydoro electric unit has not been started and only one of the five units of canal bed hydel unit was on.

The dam’s main power plant i.e river bed one houses six 200 MW Francis pump-turbines to generate electricity and include a pumped-storage capability. Additionally, a power plant on the intake for the main canal ie canal bed contains five 50 MW Kaplan turbine-generators. The total installed capacity of the power facilities is 1,450 MW.

Notably, due to recent spell of rain in the catchment areas of river Narmada in Chhatisgarh and Madhya Pradesh and other other rivers like Tapi in Maharashtra, the water level in other important dams like Ukai and Panam have also seen good rise.

According to official figures issued today all the 203 dam/reservoirs across the state have 275018 million cubic ft water storage which was 49.41% of the total water storage capacity. Of these the 15 in North Gujarat have 33.11% storage, 17 in central Gujarat have 78.24%, 13 in South Gujarat have 48.06%, 20 in Kutch have 12.59 and 138 in Saurashtra 44.52% storage.

The state till 7 am this morning has recorded 70.23% of average monsoon rain. Kutch region has seen 25.21%, North Gujarat 38.62%, East Central Gujarat 63.99%, Saurashtra 69.02% and South Gujarat has seen 90.85%.

DeshGujarat