By Vishal Gulati
Shimla, Jan 16 (IANS) High-altitude lakes and water channels in Himachal Pradesh have frozen, bringing down hydropower generation in the state by 80 percent, officials said Saturday.

“Hydropower generation has come down to just 20 percent of capacity in the past one and a half months because of low flow of water in the rivers,” said Suneel Grover, director of generation at the Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board.

“Presently, we are generating just 2-2.1 million units per day against the peak generation (between March and October) of 11.2-11.5 million units per day,” Grover told IANS.

The electricity board runs 21 run-of-river projects with a combined generation capacity of 467 MW, producing about 1,800 million units of power annually.

According to Manmohan Singh, director at the meteorological office here, the higher reaches of Lahaul and Spiti, Kinnaur, Chamba and Kullu districts are reeling under sub-zero temperature.

“Most of the rivers and water channels in these districts are frozen,” Singh said.

While Keylong in Lahaul and Spiti district saw temperture dipping to minus 11.9 degrees Celsius Saturday, Kalpa in Kinnaur recorded minus 4.8 degrees.

Apart from the state-owned projects, there are 13 major hydropower projects in the state, which are run either by the central government, private players or joint venture companies.

These plants are also running below their generation capacity.

“Power generation has come down to seven million units per day from the normal generation of 36 million units,” said V.K. Verma, deputy general manager of the Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam, the company that operates and runs the 1,500-MW Nathpa-Jhakri project in Kinnaur district.

“The discharge in the Satluj river (on which the plant is located) has reduced to 50 to 60 cubic metres per second against the normal flow of 500 to 600 cubic metres.”

According to Grover, the state requires between 20 million and 21.5 million units of power daily.

“We get 7.5 million units daily from Punjab, Haryana and Delhi under various banking schemes, and 9.2 million units the central pool,” he said.

Himachal Pradesh, which has abundant water resources with five major rivers flowing down the slopes of the Himalayas, has been requesting the central government to set up a gas-based power plant for meeting the power shortage during winter.

“The hydropower generation in the state gets reduced drastically between October and March. We have asked the central government to set up a 500-MW gas-based power plant in the state,” Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal told IANS.

“This will help fill the gap between demand and supply during the lean period,” he added.

The hill state’s power generation potential is 20,416 MW, about 25 percent of India’s total hydropower potential.

Of this, around 6,500 MW has been developed so far.

Eleven projects with a combined generation capacity of 1,124 MW are under execution by the state, while 15 projects with a generation capacity of 1,738 MW are under execution by private companies.