Impounding of water in reservoir of 800 MW Koldam resumed

The impounding water in the reservoir of 800 MW Kol Dam Hydroelectric project, which was suspended on December 21, resumed today.
The impounding of water in the reservoir of the project commenced on December 19 by Chairman-cum-Managing Director of National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), Arun Rai Chaudhary from a control room through remote system.
However, the gates of bottom outlet of diversion tunnel LAV became non-functional on December 21 and NTPC had to exercise the inevitable option of draining out the water through diversion tunnel KUSH which was stored during impounding for two days.
For the construction of main dam, Sutlej river has been diverted by constructing twin tunnels LAV and KUSH (named after the sons of Lord Rama) of 1-km length each and both these tunnels were provided gates at inlet.

The filling of the rock-cum-earth fill dam with clay reservoir and height of 163 mts would take around 315 days to fill and a bottom outlet has been provided with two vertical and two radial gates in the middle of the diversion tunnel LAV.
Arrangements have also been made to facilitate flow of water into this tunnel from the top of the inlet gate of tunnel LAV.

On the night December 21 when water entered into tunnel LAV, the pressure of water was more than expected and as a result, the gates developed some snag and stopped functioning and the water already stored in the reservoir had to be drained out.

After grappling with the problem for eight days, the gates were repaired yesterday evening and the testing of impounding process was started this morning, GM of the project Anoop Kumar Nanda said.
The impounding was going on successfully since this morning and there was no problem, he added.