DUSHANBE, October 16, 2009, Asia-Plus — Current water levels at the reservoir powering the Norak hydroelectric power plant (HPP) are at the level of some 906 meters above sea level, the Norak HPP director Sharifkhon Samiyev said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
According to him, the current rate of inflow of water into the Norak reservoir is 340 meters per second, while the water outflow rate is some 460 meters per second.
“Since October, water levels at the reservoir have reduced 3-4 centimeters per day,” Samiyev said.
On the replacement of water wheels at the station’s units, he noted that each new water wheel manufactured for the station in Ukraine cost US2 million to US$3 million and the delivery of it to the Norak station came to up to US$400,000.
“Installation of the new water wheel that was delivered to Tajikistan on October 13 will take some six months,” the director said.
Samiyev says that compared to the previous years, electricity supplies to the population this winter will be much better. “Good weather conditions as well as introduction of the Sangtuda-1 HPP and a number of small hydropower plants into operation this year contribute to this,” he noted.
The Norak Dam is a large earth fill dam located 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 1980, when Tajikistan was still a republic within the Soviet Union.
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. The station’s capacity is 11.2 billion kWh of electrical power per year.
