Tajikistan’s Government is conducting negotiations with Ukrainian companies Turboatom and Elektrotyazhmash on the delivery of the remaining four units to Tajikistan for the Roghun hydroelectric power plant (HPP).
The Tajik Embassy in Kyiv is conducting the negotiations with the Kharkiv-based companies, according to the Kharkiv regional administration.
Tajikistan’s open joint-stock company (OJSC) Roghun-HPP and Ukraine’s OJSC Turboatom signed an agreement on a long-term cooperation on October 29, 2009. In March 2010, the sides signed a contract for shipment of additional equipment.
To-date, Turboatom has reportedly supplied two 640Mwt units (hydro units #5 and #6), rotor wheel, ring valve 9.5 meters in diameter, turbine shield for ring valve, spare parts for three units and 12 kits of hinged supports for radial gates to Tajikistan for the Roghun HPP.
Recall, Tajikistan stemmed the flow of the Vakhsh River for construction of the Roghun hydroelectric power plant (HPP) mega-dam in late October 2016.
The Roghun HPP is an embankment dam in the preliminary stages of construction on the Vakhsh River in southern Tajikistan. It is one of the planned hydroelectric power plants of Vakhsh Cascade.
The Roghun HPP was first proposed in 1959 and a technical scheme was developed by 1965. Construction began in 1976 but the project was frozen after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
An agreement on finishing the construction was signed between Tajikistan and Russia in 1994; however, as the agreement was not implemented, it was denounced by Tajikistan parliament.
In October 2004, Tajikistan signed an agreement with Russia's RusAl aluminum company. In August 2007, Tajikistan formally revoked a contract with RusAl, accusing it of failing to fulfill the contract.
In April 2008, Tajikistan founded OJSC NBO Roghun for completing the construction of the Roghun HPP.
To raise funds to complete construction of the Roghun HPP the government started to sell shares in Roghun to people on January 6, 2010. Tajikistan has reportedly issued 6 billion somoni worth of Roghun shares.
In 2016, construction duties on Roghun were assigned to Italian company Salini Impregilo. It is estimated that the project will cost $3.9 billion to complete.
The project is broken down into four components, with the most expensive one involving the building of a 335-meter-high rockfill dam — the tallest in the world — which will entail costs of around $1.95 billion. Construction of the Roghun hydropower plant is expected to be completed in 2033.
Two of the six turbines have already started producing energy for sale to raise funding to complete it. The first turbine went into service in November 2018 and the second one was introduced into operation in September last year.
In 2019, the Roghun HPP reportedly generated 840 million kWh of electricity, which was little more than 4 percent of the overall volume of electricity generated by Tajikistan’s power plants last year
If built as planned, the dam will be the tallest in the world at 335 meters and have a capacity of 3600 MW.
