Sidrapong Hydroelectric Power Station
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Sidrapong Hydroelectric Power Station ( Sidrapong Hydel Power Station), located at the foothills of Arya Tea Estate from
Darjeeling Darjeeling (, , ) is a city in the northernmost region of the States and union territories of India, Indian state of West Bengal. Located in the Eastern Himalayas, it has an average elevation of . To the west of Darjeeling lies the Koshi Pr ...
town, is the oldest hydel power station or
hydroelectric power plant Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is Electricity generation, electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies 15% of the world's electricity, almost 4,210 TWh in 2023, which is more than all other Renewable energ ...
in
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
. commissioned on 10 November 1897, its original capacity was 2 × 65 kW, which was expanded in phases for increased demands to a total 1000 kW in 1916. Having reached the limit of the water supply, the machinery was replaced in 1931 for more-efficient triple-phase transmission. The station uses water from the (Nepalese for 'streams') Kotwali, Hospital and Barbatia, channeled through a network of
flume A flume is a human-made channel for water, in the form of an open declined gravity chute whose walls are raised above the surrounding terrain, in contrast to a trench or ditch. Flumes are not to be confused with aqueducts, which are built to t ...
s to reservoirs, then passed down
penstock A penstock is a sluice or gate or intake structure that controls water flow, or an enclosed pipe that delivers water to hydro turbines and sewerage systems. The term is of Scots origin, and was inherited from the earlier technology of mill pond ...
s to the generators.
West Bengal State Electricity Board West Bengal State Electricity Board (WBSEB) was a state government electricity regulation board in West Bengal in India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependenc ...
(WBSEB) took over operation of the station when it absorbed Darjeeling Electric Supply in 1978. In the 1980s, the station was damaged due to a landslide and remained closed for a decade, but was revived in 1997 to mark its centenary. The station has been accorded
cultural heritage Cultural heritage is the heritage of tangible and intangible heritage assets of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Not all heritages of past generations are "heritage"; rather, heritage is a product of selection by socie ...
status by the central government.


Approaches

There are 2 approaches to the station. The first is via Arya Tea Estate. The road to the tea factory building is well laid and accessible by vehicles, covering a distance of from Darjeeling. Beyond the tea factory, there is a steep pony track to Sidrapong Forebay. Though not completely developed, this approach offers scenic views of the tea gardens. The second and more-popular approach is via Bloomfield tea factory, covering a stretch of . The former foot track beyond Bloomfield factory was developed by the
Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC; 1988–2012), also once known for a short period of time as Darjeeling Gorkha Autonomous Hill Council, was a semi-autonomous body that looked after the administration of the hills of Darjeeling District in ...
to a metalled road (
gravel road A gravel road is a type of unpaved road surfaced with gravel that has been brought to the site from a quarry or stream bed. Gravel roads are common in less-developed nations, and also in the rural areas of developed nations such as Canada and ...
) with a bridge across the Kotwali Jhora to the Sidrapong Forebay.


History

On 11 February 1896, the Municipal Commissioners of
Darjeeling Darjeeling (, , ) is a city in the northernmost region of the States and union territories of India, Indian state of West Bengal. Located in the Eastern Himalayas, it has an average elevation of . To the west of Darjeeling lies the Koshi Pr ...
decided to set up a hydroelectric power station for the purpose of lighting the town. A loan of 1 lakh (100,000) was secured from the government, and a site for the power station was selected at the foot of the Arya Tea Estate at Sidrapong. The site was then a fine orchard of the Maharajah of Burdwan, who was pleased to hand it over to the municipality for the importance of the public interest. The work for the installation of a power station started immediately, with machines and equipment imported from Britain. There being no proper road communication, all equipment, machinery and materials had to be transported manually—a Herculean task, inconceivable in the present day.Encyclopedia Darjeeling by Barun Roy, Published by New Media Foundation, Kolkata The first plant consisted of two 65 kW Crompton-Brunton single-phase, 2300 volt 83.3 Hz alternators coupled with two Gunther's turbines. India's first hydroelectric power station with 2 × 65 kW capacity was commissioned on 10 November 1897 by Sir C. C. Stevens, the Acting Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. It is a noteworthy fact that the first power utility run on a commercial basis for the use of the general public in India was developed by the public sector under state patronage.Fallen Cicada by Barun Roy, Published by Beacon Publications, Darjeeling. The total initial cost of installation of this power station was only 1.2 lakhs (120,000 rupees). For the first few years
Darjeeling Municipality Darjeeling Municipality is responsible for the civic administration of the town of Darjeeling, West Bengal, India. Established in 1850, it is one of the oldest municipalities in West Bengal and one of the oldest city administrative bodies in In ...
had to run Sidrapong Hydel Power Station at a loss, there being few consumers of electrical power. But as the demand grew, a 135 kW set was added in 1905 and a third 135 kW set was installed in 1909 in the same power house. A new power house was built in 1916 at a higher location, now known as Jubilee Power House. In this way, the total capacity of the station grew from 130 kW to 1000 kW. However, the limited supply of water meant that power generation could not be increased to match the growing demand of the town and of the factories at the neighbouring tea gardens. Various schemes were prepared to install a larger power station elsewhere. On January 18, 1915, while surveying for such, Municipal Engineer George P. Robertson drowned in the Great Rangeet River. In the meantime, the demand for power grew rapidly, while the old single-phase system of supply had become out-dated as it suffered from transmission losses. On 9 June 1931, the Municipal Commissioners resolved to modernize the power supply by replacing the old machines and switching from single-phase 83 Hz to three-phase 50 Hz. In 1931, the seven old machines of the single-phase system were replaced with five 200 kW units in the new three-phase system, one of them at the Lower Power House and four at the higher Jubilee Power House. One 200 kW set was moved in 1942 to a still lower location at Singtam (Darjeeling Singtam) Power Station. This may be called a third stage of Sindrapong since it runs in tandem with Sidrapong Power House utilising its discharge water. The present installation, therefore, consists of 3 sets of 200 kW at Sidrapong Power House plus one DC hydel generation set of 20 kW for auxiliary power.
West Bengal State Electricity Board West Bengal State Electricity Board (WBSEB) was a state government electricity regulation board in West Bengal in India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependenc ...
(WBSEB) took over Sidrapong Hydel Power Station when it absorbed the Darjeeling Electric Supply Undertaking on 30 January 1978.Sidrapong, Heritage Power Station, Published by Corporate Public Relations Department, WBSEB, Vidyut Bhavan, Calcutta 700 091. 10 November 1997 Centenary Booklet It had been smoothly running the power station until the early 1990s when it was considered that the aging power station be converted into a heritage site.


Water sources and hydrology

The power station is fed with water from the three (Nepalese for 'streams'): Kotwali, Hospital and Barbatia. This water is channeled through
flume A flume is a human-made channel for water, in the form of an open declined gravity chute whose walls are raised above the surrounding terrain, in contrast to a trench or ditch. Flumes are not to be confused with aqueducts, which are built to t ...
s constructed from black metal sheets of 1.3 mm (0.051 in, 16 gauge) thickness with masonry duct and concrete lining. The ducts are in cross-section, except where mentioned otherwise. Water from the flumes is gathered at the forebay reservoir, then fed into a
penstock A penstock is a sluice or gate or intake structure that controls water flow, or an enclosed pipe that delivers water to hydro turbines and sewerage systems. The term is of Scots origin, and was inherited from the earlier technology of mill pond ...
(a long vertical pipe) which delivers it to the gates of the turbines.


Kotwali flume

This flume is a conduit, with a silt tank near the intake to remove sand and loose stones from the water. The minimum quantity of water available in the driest month of April is .


Hospital flume

This flume moves alongside precipitous rocks which have been cut in places to accommodate it. This source is dirty so the flume has a silt tank at either end to screen out detritus. It provides about of water in the driest month.


Barbatia flume

This flume is long, including a section on a suspension bridge. The conduit over the bridge is and runs alongside a footway. The Barbatia provides the largest quantity of clean water: about in the driest month. The flume has a silt tank with scour gates near its intake; in heavy rains, these gates are left partly open so that grit is automatically scoured out.


Forebay

Water from the three flumes are collected in a 1,864-cubic-metre (410,000 imp gal, 65,860 cu ft) reservoir which is connected to a larger 5,680-cubic-metre (1.25 million imp gal, 200,000 cu ft) reservoir.


Penstocks

Water from the smaller reservoir is passed through a underground cast-iron pipe to a pentrough , the bottom of which is on the same level as the reservoir. The water runs from the pentrough down to the gates of the turbines through steel pipes long and inside diameter. The pipes are made from double-riveted steel plate in sections with flanged joints. There are two bends in the length, one of 28 degrees at about two-thirds the way down and the other of 90 degrees just beyond the power house. The bends are of cast-iron tested to . There are no expansion joints; the pipes are kept full of water and are buried underground so that the temperature variation is small. The pipe line is connected to a steel receiver pipe, , made of plate steel. It is made in two parts, one tapered to diameter and the other part fitted with a blank end bolted on. The receiver is provided with two branches of inside diameter for the two turbines and one branch for the 20 kW auxiliary generator. Water from the larger reservoir is fed to another penstock for a length of . This pipe is of inside diameter, assembled from steel plate in . The ends fit into loose collars, which are filled-in with lead; rings of ferro-concrete connected by iron bolts were cast round the collar-ends to prevent the lead from being blown out. The lower length is of inside diameter made from steel in . The two different sections are connected with a steel reducing piece, long. Before entering the machines there are sluice valves with provision for a bypass valve to reduce the pressure at the time of opening the main valve. There are provisions for running all the machines from both the reservoirs separately in case of necessity by providing interconnection in the pipes along with necessary valves and gates.


Switch yard

The switch yard is located immediately below the machine floor level on the northern part of the building. It has housed four 0.4/6.6 kV transformers.


Renovation

For many decades, the project was ignored by the state and the private sector. Larger and modern power supply networks were developed to supply the growing populations of Darjeeling and Kalimpong. The number of workers at the power plant dwindled and the machinery fell into disrepair. During the
Gorkhaland The Gorkhaland Territorial Administration is a semi-autonomous council for the Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts of West Bengal state in India. The GTA was formed in 2012 to replace the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council, which was formed in 198 ...
political agitation, the local residents struggled to preserve the station from rival groups seeking to demolish it. The station was damaged around this time due to a landslide and remained closed for a decade. The central government and the WBSEB revived the power station in 1997 to mark its centenary. In a special ceremony, the station was accorded
cultural heritage Cultural heritage is the heritage of tangible and intangible heritage assets of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Not all heritages of past generations are "heritage"; rather, heritage is a product of selection by socie ...
status by the central government, with a pledge to revive the power plant. However, efforts at repairing the plant and restarting operations languished for 6 years owing to persistent technical problems and lack of attention from state authorities. The residents of the towns of Sidrapong, Risheehat, Arya and Bloomfield formed a committee on 1 December 2003 to revive and resuscitate the historic and monumental hydel project.


The oldest power plants in India

Some of the oldest electric power plants (or stations) established in India are as follows: * Sidrapong Hydel Power Station *
Shivanasamudra Falls Shivanasamudra Falls is a cluster of waterfalls on the borders of Malavalli, Mandya and Kollegala, Chamarajanagara, in Karnataka, India, situated along the river Kaveri. The falls form the contour between the districts of Chamarajanagara and M ...
Hydroelectric Power Plant in
Kingdom of Mysore The Kingdom of Mysore was a geopolitical realm in southern India founded in around 1399 in the vicinity of the modern-day city of Mysore and prevailed until 1950. The territorial boundaries and the form of government transmuted substantially ...
Shivanasamudra Falls#Power generation *
Sumera Hydroelectric Power Plant Sumera Hydroelectric Power Plant is one of the oldest hydroelectric power plants or hydel power stations in India. It is located at Sumera Dariyapur in Jawan Sikandarpur of Aligarh District, Uttar Pradesh, India. Approach Jawan Sikandarpur is ...
at Sumera Dariyapur in
Aligarh Aligarh (; formerly known as Koil) is a city in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. It is the administrative headquarters of Aligarh district and lies northwest of state capital Lucknow and approximately southeast of the capital, New Delhi. ...
, built by the
British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...
in 1931. * Palra Hydroelectric Power Plant at Palra in
Bulandshahar Bulandshahr, formerly Baran, is a city and a municipal board in Bulandshahr district in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. It is the administrative headquarters of Bulandshahr district and part of Delhi NCR region. According to the Government ...
. *
Faridabad Thermal Power Station Faridabad Thermal Power Station is located in the New Industrial Township of the Indian city of Faridabad, from the capital Delhi. The power plant is one of the coal-based power plants owned by Haryana Power Generation Corporation Limited. Pres ...
in
Faridabad Faridabad () is the most populous List of cities in Haryana by population, city near NCT of Delhi in the Indian state of Haryana and a part of National Capital Region (India), Delhi National Capital Region. It is one of the major satellite citie ...
. These power plants have either been closed or on the brink of closure due to age and obsolescence.


See also

*
Pharping Hydro Power Project Pharping Hydro Power Project () is the first hydro-power project of Nepal and second of South Asia. It is situated in Kathmandu district. In 2010, it was declared a Living Museum by government of Nepal and was open for public. History Pharping Hy ...
*
Darjeeling Darjeeling (, , ) is a city in the northernmost region of the States and union territories of India, Indian state of West Bengal. Located in the Eastern Himalayas, it has an average elevation of . To the west of Darjeeling lies the Koshi Pr ...
*
West Bengal West Bengal (; Bengali language, Bengali: , , abbr. WB) is a States and union territories of India, state in the East India, eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabi ...
*
Hydroelectricity Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is Electricity generation, electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies 15% of the world's electricity, almost 4,210 TWh in 2023, which is more than all other Renewable energ ...
*
Hydroelectric power plant Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is Electricity generation, electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies 15% of the world's electricity, almost 4,210 TWh in 2023, which is more than all other Renewable energ ...
*
Dam A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use, aqua ...
*
Renewable energy Renewable energy (also called green energy) is energy made from renewable resource, renewable natural resources that are replenished on a human lifetime, human timescale. The most widely used renewable energy types are solar energy, wind pow ...
*
Sumera Hydroelectric Power Plant Sumera Hydroelectric Power Plant is one of the oldest hydroelectric power plants or hydel power stations in India. It is located at Sumera Dariyapur in Jawan Sikandarpur of Aligarh District, Uttar Pradesh, India. Approach Jawan Sikandarpur is ...
*
Faridabad Thermal Power Station Faridabad Thermal Power Station is located in the New Industrial Township of the Indian city of Faridabad, from the capital Delhi. The power plant is one of the coal-based power plants owned by Haryana Power Generation Corporation Limited. Pres ...


Notes


References

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External links


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{{coord missing, West Bengal Buildings and structures in Darjeeling district Dams in West Bengal Economy of Darjeeling district Energy infrastructure completed in 1897 Hydroelectric power stations in West Bengal 1897 establishments in India