Purulia Pumped Storage Project
The Purulia Pumped Storage Project is the first 900MW pumped storage project in India running successfully and the exotic Upper and Lower Dam are located at the Ajodhya Hills, a small plateau with hilly surroundings located in the Purulia district of the state West Bengal, India. The main objective of PPSP is to meet peak load demand of the system and utilize excess available power of the system during off peak time, hence to flatten the load demand curve. The main structures involved in the project are two Rockfill dams (Upper and Lower Dam) with central clay core for upper and lower reservoirs with a live storage of 13 million cum each, twin water conductor, an underground power house (157 m long, 22.5 m width, 48.7 m height) to accommodate four reversible pump turbines (vertical Francis, rated head 177m, maximum power discharge : 150 cum/sec) of 225 MW each, an underground transformer (280MVA of Four nos. 16.5kv/400kv) cavern (119 m long, 17 m width, 17 m height), an access tunnel to power house and 400 KV gas insulated substation linked through a cable tunnel. Two 400 KV double circuit transmission lines connecting Durgapur Sub-station and Arambagh Sub-station with the project has been developed to transmit and receive power.
The entire project area is prone to earthquake, flood, forest fire and other natural disasters. Also the people are vulnerable to various snake bites, animal attacks, etc. WBSEDCL has around 400 employees involved in the project area along with their families and additionally around 300 people are involved indirectly in various capacities along with the project.
Training: Training consisting of classroom @ 20% and indoor and outdoor practical @ 80% was imparted to 16 employees of the 1st Batch. The idea of this course is to form a quick response team who would be able to respond to any disaster situation in and around the project area.
The trainees were between the age group of 25 to 45 and were extremely enthusiastic about all the topics and participated in all the mock drills and various arduous training exercise that were held. The trainees comprised of both fulltime employees and outsourced employees of WBSEDCL.