DUSHANBE, November 23, 2012, Asia-Plus — An operation on replacement of the third rotor wheel at the Norak hydroelectric power plant (HPP) is expected to be completed in spring next year, an official source at Barqi Tojik (the state-owned utility responsible for generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity in Tajikistan) told Asia-Plus Friday afternoon.
We will recall that Ukraine’s transport aircraft Antonov-225 airlifted the rotor wheel for the Norak hydroelectric power plant (HPP) into Dushanbe on October 17 this year.
This rotor wheel and spare parts delivered from Turboatom (Kharkov) are reportedly intended for modernization of Unit 8 of the plant. The modernization will allow increasing the unit’s capacity to 355 megawatts.
It is already the third rotor wheel delivered to Tajikistan from Ukraine for the Norak HPP over the past four years.
We will recall that Barqi Tojik and Ukraine’s Turboatom signed a contract on modernization of Norak HPP”s units in Dushanbe in October 2009. Modernization will increase the station’s capacity by 10 percent.
The Norak Dam is an earth fill embankment dam on the Vakhsh River in Tajikistan. At 300 meters it is currently the tallest dam in the world. Construction of the dam began in 1961 and was completed in 1979, when Tajikistan was still a republic within the Soviet Union. The Norak Dam is uniquely constructed, with a central core of cement forming an impermeable barrier within a 300 meter-high rock and earth fill construction. The volume of the mound is 54 million m³. The dam includes nine hydroelectric generating units, the first commissioned in 1972 and the last in 1979.
A total of nine hydroelectric turbines are installed in the Norak Dam. Originally having a generating capacity of 300 megawatts each (2,700 megawatts total), they have since been redesigned and retrofitted such that they now combine to produce 3,000 megawatts. Units 1,2,3,4,6,7,8, and 9 now have capacity of 335 megawatts each and Unit 5 now has capacity of 320 megawatts.
