DUSHANBE, July 16, 2014, Asia-Plus – On Tuesday July 15 at 8:00 pm, Tajikistan’s largest Norak hydroelectric power plant (HPP) reportedly generated its 400 billionth kilowatt-hour of electricity since the plant’s first unit was introduced into operation in 1972.
“Over the past five years, the Government of Tajikistan has spent 91.2 million U.S. dollars and 25 million Euros for modernization of the Norak HPP,” Nozir Yodgori, a spokesman for Barqi Tojik (the state-owned utility responsible for generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity in Tajikistan) told Asia-Plus in an interview.
The Norak Dam is an earth fill embankment dam on the Vakhsh River. 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.
