M A I N   N E W S

Dehar power house shut as water submerges
3 floors
Kuldeep Chauhan
Tribune News Service

Dehar (Mandi), August 28
The 990 MW Beas Satluj Link (BSL), managed by the Bhakhra Beas Management Board (BBMB), has been shut down indefinitely as one of the six shaft seals that confines water inside the water conductor system and lubricate shaft, burst suddenly at around 10 pm last night, submerging the three floors of the Dehar power house, including generators and electronic motors and transforms under water completely.

Though BBMB has yet to ascertain the exact cause of the accident and its loss to the power house machineries worth crore of rupees, including power generation loss, the BBMB is losing 140 lakh units of electricity worth “Rs 28 crore every day since last night, that in turn can worsen the power crisis in the North further”.

Sources in the Dehar House told The Tribune that all the six units of power houses were running when the “shaft seal” busted suddenly under pressure and Satluj water gushed in submerging the first floor of the power house.

There was panic among 30 workers on the night shift that time. Before they could shut down the penstock duct, the river water gushed in the power house. The workers fearing electrocution, shut down the power supply that in turn failed to close the inlets and outlets of the draft tubes to stop the gushing water entering into the power house.

It took over 60-90 minutes to shut down the gates as the power supply to operate the gates was arranged from the substations, sources said. The Beas water coming from the BSL Pandoh Dam had been stopped soon after the seal shaft broke.

A BBMB member Sharad Mahajan who rushed to the power house after the accident said all the six gates had been shut down and there was negligible leakage from the river into the power house. "We hope we will operate 10 pumps and three more have been procured from outside and hope to drain out the remaining seven meters of water from the power house within 48 hours," he claimed.

Mr Mahajan said the power house had been shut down indefinitely.

The Bhakhra Dam level stood today at 1673 feet, about seven feet below its highest-ever level of 1683 feet recorded in September last year following Parechu flood, revealed BBMB engineers and ruled out that the shaft seal was damaged by backwaters of the Bhakhra.

With the indefinite shutting down of the BSL project, the power crisis in the North would worsen further, as the BBMB is selling power to Punjab, Haryana and Himachal, said engineers.