Shimla, May 17 QNN
100 MW Uhal Stage –III hydro electricity power house of HPSEBL was reportedly damaged as penstroke (major supply tube) blasted amid production on the intervening night of May 16 and 17. The sources revealed that the incident occurred while production team at the power house tried to increase the pressure to double the production at the power house.
The Uhal –Stage –III was situated on river Uhal in Joginder Nagar subdivision of district Mandi. Significantly, the HPSEBL had two more power houses on this river including Uhal-stage-I and stage-II.
It was also reported that the power supply was being transmitted to power grid at Hamirpur. It was learnt that the penstroke could not bear the pressure and it blasted about 150 meters from the power house. This resulted in heavy flooding into the power house building breaking the walls that damaged machinery worth crores of rupees. The exact amount of loss was yet to be assessed. The complete power generation section of the unit was filled with mud, sludge and water. Aa many as 15 staff members were also trapped in the building who were later rescued. It was learnt that one engineer demonstrated courage to close the valve of the penstroke to stop the flow of water. There were over 30 members at the site at the time of incident.
Dinesh Chaudhary Project officer said that the incident had damaged the power house but there was no casualty.
Anurag Kashyap Joint Director (PR) of HPSEBL said that the estimate of the loss to the project would be assessed by a team of experts. He said that investigation to ascertain the cause of incident would also be conducted by the board authorities.
(OVER)