JOIN USPower Minister D K Shivkumar visited the Varahi underground power house in Hosangadi Gram Panchayath limits on Sunday.
Giving details about the project, Superintendent Engineer Kamalakska K said the Varahi underground powerhouse with an installed capacity of 460 MW has four units working on to generate as many as 1100 million units of energy annually.
Stating that Varahi is Karnataka’s first and the only underground powerhouse, he said the first and second unit were commissioned in 1989 and 1990 respectively. The third and fourth units’ were commissioned in 2009. He added the power house is located 235 meter above the sea level with three reservoirs in Mani dam, pick up dam and fore bay dam. The Mani dam is the main reservoir.
He said the highest generation achieved per year was during 2007-08 with the generating 1401.021 million units.
He said the Central Electric Authority has set the target to generate power up to 1060 million annually, however the powerhouse has crossed the target by now. The power generated by February is 1174.946 million units. Around 3-4 million power is generated per day, which accounts to nearly 100 million units per month. The grid frequency is 50 cycles per second. The power is sold for 56 paise per unit to the government by KPTCL, he added.