BANGALORE: A fresh problem has gripped the State which is already reeling under severe power shortage.

About 600 MW of power from the six hydel generation units of the Nagjhari Power House across the Kali river has not been available for the last couple of days owing to a problem with the seal of the hydraulic gate there.

Following this, the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation (KPTCL) on Tuesday enforced load shedding in semi-urban and rural areas of the State, sources told The Hindu.

Two units of the power station were scheduled to be taken up for maintenance from January 14. But a problem with the seal of the gate at the power station has forced the Karnataka Power Corporation Limited (KPCL) to take up repair work in all the six units.

Off-peak hours

According to a senior KPCL official, the generation is stopped at the power station only during the off-peak hours (from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.) to ensure that the power supply situation in the State was not affected.

The gates were located about 200 ft. under water. Hence the services of deep divers would be needed to undertake repair, he said. The official said that it would be possible to solve the problem in a couple of days.

Under normal circumstances, the problem at the power station that requires only stopping of generation for rectification, may not have caused much impact.

But since the State is already facing a shortage of power, the pressure is being felt by the power supplying companies.

Power consumption in the State stood at around a whopping 118 million units on Monday. It would have crossed 120 million units if Monday was not a holiday, sources said. Meanwhile the high-level committee set up to discuss the ways of tiding over the power crisis and headed by the Chief Minister, is yet to meet.

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