|
January, 2003 TODAY, electricity has become an essential ingredient of human life. Unfortunately, it cannot be donated or stored like blood by creating "power banks". It has to be simply generated and used. For a country, its per capita power generation or consumption has become a prime indicator of its economic growth and self-reliance. As the universe gets increasingly electrified, necessity of harnessing every major as well as minor resource has become extremely important — rather essential. We are always on the lookout for major resources to tap energy. In our effort to strike goldmines of power, we have been forgetting the smaller sources. Another reason for this has been non-development of cost effective technology. Now the scene has undergone a change and needs a fresh view and analysis. In China, every small fall available in the canals is being utilised to generate power. Turbines being developed there are such that can be carried in a carrier tied to your vehicle. China is fast approaching the situation when every house located on the bank of a river shall install its own small turbine in the river and produce energy enough for a single house. It is time India paid full attention to the micro hydel potential it has and tapped it alongwith its plans to set up big power projects. Hilly areas of Himalayan region have a number of perennial streams having little discharges that can be harnessed for small power generation. In the plains, the canals have many small drops available. Though the drops are small but discharges available are significant. A number of small falls are available in these canal branches. At many sites, the fall is small while the discharge is large and at some sites, significant fall is available. The falls available vary from 0.5 metre to 3.5 metres while the discharge varies from as little as 186 cusecs to as large as 12983 cusecs. There are possibilities of integrating little falls and then utilise them for power production. Sometimes situations arise when benefits can be reaped of the new scenario arising after setting up of certain projects. One such possibility has arisen in Ropar. The escape cum hydel channel of Ropar Thermal Plant, that takes out the circulating water of the plant to Sutlej, has a fall of 9.57 metres available. This fall can be well utilised to generate about 17000 KW of power which means about 35000 units per day. Another big opportunity has arisen at Mukerian, where about 18 MW of power can be generated utilising the fall available in the proposed Mukerian Hydel channel Stage-II leading to the River Beas. Table 1 shows the canal and branch wise number of projects and the power potential available in Punjab. It can be seen that the little power potentials of different sites, if harnessed, can combine together to provide 154 MW of power. It can be a big help to ease the power position in Punjab. Most of these projects are to be taken up by the Punjab Energy Development Agency (PEDA) and the BBMB while the Ropar and Mukerian projects are to be handled by the PSEB. Table 2 shows the present status of various projects. Twelve projects having a generation capacity of 14.4 MW have been completed till date. Three projects on Kotla branch are almost complete. These together will provide about 5.2 MW more. The PSEB has actively taken up both its projects at Ropar and Mukerian and construction work on these projects is expected to commence soon. PEDA has recently launched a sort of compaign to allot all its projects on each canal branch to a single private party and to get the work done through the private companies. Detailed project reports (DPRs) of many of these projects with PEDA are either approved or under approval. The BBMB has taken up preparatory work to start work on three projects having comparatively larger capacities. These three projects located on the BML will provide 20MW additional capacity. The BML has the advantage of having little or no silt because the channel is fully lined. Thus the projects on the BML can be brought up easily and run without problems while for other projects to be set up on other branches, measures to prevent clogging of machinery by the silt will need to be taken. There were times when the cost of setting of micro hydel projects proved to be a deterrent in taking them up. The cost used to be compared with the per- MW cost of large hydro projects. Such comparison was not justified as a smaller project would definitely cost more. What needed to be seen was the perpetual generation that these projects would have provided. However, now the scene has undergone a big change. The generating equipment now being produced is cost effective and can be selected with respect to the type of flow. Different equipment can be chosen for constant and variable discharges, little or more head and with respect to the space available across or along the flow of water. The energy generated by a micro hydel project can be consumed near the project itself thus saving expenditure on transmission and distribution lines. Isolated pockets of villages where the transmission system may not easily reach, specially in case of Himachal Pradesh, can be lighted up through micro hydel projects. Otherwise these projects can be connected to the available grid at appropriate voltage.
Their gestation periods are also very small and the decades-long wait involved in the commissioning of a large hydroelectric power project is also not there.
|
