Southern States - Kerala   

Fire at Moozhiyar power house: one killed

By Our Staff Reporter

PATHANAMTHITTA March 7. The power generation at the Moozhiyar power house of Sabarigiri hydro-electric project was disrupted today following a major fire in the control panel of the power house which killed a KSEB office assistant and injured two casual workers.

The deceased has been identified as Ashokan (41). One of the injured, Rajendran, has been admitted to the Pathanamthitta General Hospital, and the other, Prasannan, has been admitted to a private hospital.

According to KSEB sources at Moozhiyar, the mishap occurred around 12-30 p.m. with a loud blast in the auxiliary transformer of the fourth generator at the power house. The bus-bars linking the auxiliary transformers of all the six generators at the power house were completely burnt incurring heavy loss to the Electricity Board.

The 300 MW power project is the second largest hydro-electric project in the State and the KSEB was soon to launch a Rs. 92.2-crore renovation work at the power house. There were reports that the renovation work had been awarded to an Austrian company and experts of the company had begun the work, unofficially, in view of the acute power crisis in the State. There were also reports that a few foreign technicians were also present at the power house when the mishap occurred.

The KSEB sources said the entire cable network including the control cables and power cables had been reduced to ashes in the fire by the time the Fire Force units from Pathanamthitta and Ranni reached the spot around 2-30 p.m.

The office assistant and the workers were taken out of the control panel room by the Fire Force team after a tough operation during which two of the fire fighters fainted.

The Moozhiyar power house with a capacity to generate 1,275 MU of huydel power has got six generators of 50 MW capacity each. However, two generators were under repair and only two of the remaining four generators were being operated due to the drastic depletion of water level in the Sabarigiri reservoirs for the past one month.

The fire and the subsequent disruption of power generation at Sabarigiri is likely to create more problems for the KSEB and the Government, especially when it has announced lifting of load-shedding from tomorrow till March 28 in view of the ensuing SSLC examination.

Highly placed KSEB sources say that the Board would have to opt for `unofficial' power-cuts, even if it sticks to the earlier decision to withdraw the load-shedding from tomorrow in the backdrop of the alarming power crisis in the offing following the disruption of power generation at Moozhiyar.

Our Special Correspondent in Thiruvananthapuram writes:

Sources in the KSEB said that, though the extent of the damage was yet to be assessed, it might take quite some time for power generation at this station to resume. The Moozhiyar power house, with a capacity to generate 300 MW of electricity, is the second largest generation centre in the State after Idukki.

The daily generation of electricity at the hydel stations in the State is now in the range of 11 million units, of which 3 million units have been from Moozhiyar. Following today's accident, the station has been shut down. It would be difficult for the KSEB to make good this shortage and find still more power to enable it to lift the load shedding.

The Electricity Minister, Kadavoor Sivadasan, said the Government was trying to draw the required additional power from Tamil Nadu, the Power Trading Corporation and Central generating stations.

From Monday onwards, 50 MW of power will be available from the Power Trading Corporation and 200 MW from the Central stations. Also, though the water level in the Idukki reservoir is precariously low, the power generation at this project will have to be stepped up because of the present crisis.

Idukki reservoir now has water enough to generate only 414 million units of power. The storage level is hardly 19 per cent of the capacity of the reservoir. The KSEB, in fact, has been considering cutting down the power generation at Idukki to make the water last till the end of the dry season.

Kerala has been receiving power from the Central Grid along the Theni-Moozhiyar 220 kv transmission line. This line had to be switched off because of today's accident. Mr. Sivadasan said steps were being taken to re-route the flow of power from Theni to the Edamon sub station. He said these steps were expected to fall in place this night itself.

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