Shimla: Chaba hydel plant

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Abhilash Gaur, Oct 22, 2022: The Times of India

The Chaba powerhouse stands beside the Satluj river but gets its water from a smalller stream called Nauti Khad
From: Abhilash Gaur, Oct 22, 2022: The Times of India

On August 11, the Satluj river swallowed a small hydel station at a place called Chaba on its left bank. The turbines remained under water for three days and silted up. The powerhouse is old and its output so little that it could have been abandoned. But the staff spent weeks repairing it, and now two of its five generators are back in action.


It’s not the first time Chaba has been knocked out. It was flooded only three years ago, in 2019, recalls executive engineer Ashutosh Thakur. Perhaps the worst damage occurred in the early hours of August 1, 2000, when the Satluj rose 60 feet above its normal level and flattened Tattapani village on the opposite bank.


Yet, Chaba bounces back every time because it is special. It’s one of India’s oldest powerhouses, and it’s also where Shimla city’s tryst with electricity happened almost 110 years ago. 


Thirst For Power

India is the third-largest electricity producer now, but in the 1880s electricity was such a novelty that even the viceroy – the most powerful man in India – had to use it sparingly. When Lord Dufferin’s family moved into Shimla’s Viceregal Lodge (now Rashtrapati Niwas) in 1888, they couldn’t turn on all their electric lights at once. 
“The upper part of the house is usually left in darkness when the lower is fully lighted,” a report from September 1888 says.


The Lodge had its own dynamo powered by a steam engine, but the rest of the city continued using lamps and candles, and electrification was not the government’s priority. However, Shimla’s worsening water crisis forced it to think about lifting water from nearby streams with electrical pumps. Choosing A Stream As transporting coal to Shimla was difficult those days, the govern ment decided to build a hydel plant. The Satluj seemed to be the most obvious power source but when surveys showed harnessing it would be too expensive, the choice fell on Nauti Khad, a small stream that supplied water to Shimla city.


The Nauti plan was ready by 1900. Since their goal was to only lift water, the British originally designed a 350kW station. But as no private investor showed interest, the plan got delayed by 10 years. And by the time the government told the Shimla municipality to build it in1909, the plan had been revised for a total capacity of 1. 5MW. In the first phase there would be three turbines of 250kW each, and space to add three more later. 


Transformative Effect

After almost four years of construction, the Chaba plant started producing electricity on July 15, 1913. While two-thirds of its 750kW output was reserved for the new “electrically-driven turbine pump” to lift water, the rest was used to electrify Shimla city.

Electric street lamps were installed, government buildings and private bungalows were wired, and Shimla residents were charged a rupee per month for every light point in the house. The city didn’t need fans, but before long electric heaters became popular in winter.


In 1914 there was talk of introducing electric cars also, but the first World War started just then, and by the time it ended petrol engines had become the more practical alternative.


Meanwhile, the Chaba powerhouse’s output increased to 1250kW in 1916 with the addition of a 500kW generator, and to 1750kW in the 1920s. The proposed sixth generator was never installed as Nauti Khad’s water flow had reduced, and the water stored in its reservoir was just enough to run the plant at full capacity for 3 hours and 20 minutes every day. 


Pushing Retirement

Chaba lies about an hour out of Shimla, on the road past Mashobra and Naldehra. It was set low in the Satluj valley to give the Nauti’s water a good drop. As the water rushed out of the turbines it fell straight into the fast-flowing Satluj a few metres below.


But ever since Kol Dam blocked the Satluj downstream some years ago, the river’s level has risen at Chaba, increasing the threat to the powerhouse. Executive engineer Thakur says they are building a protective wall between the powerhouse and the river.


Not much has changed at the plant in all these years. The Boving turbines and Siemens generators are the same. As parts for these vintage machines are impossible to find outside, the Chaba staff makes them when a need arises. Other Raj-era curiosities like a ceiling fan with wooden blades and a Chubb lock are also in use. 
Chaba is a chapter in India’s electrical history, and old enough to be a museum, but despite all the wear and the bruising it has suffered, it simply refuses to hang up its working boots.