DUSHANBE, December 21, 2009, Asia-Plus  -- Work on replacement of an impeller at Unit 9 of the Norak hydroelectric power plant (HPP) will begin in the near future, Sanat Rahimov, the head of Barqi Tojik (Tajik electric systems) power holding, said in an interview with Asia-Plus.

According to him, a group of specialists from Russian open joint-stock company (OJSC) Bureisk SGEM are expected to arrive in Tajikistan within the next few days to assist Tajik power engineering specialists with dissembling the old equipment and installing the new one.

“Replacement of one impeller takes some six months and all impellers at the Norak HPP will be replaced by 2013,” Rahimov said.

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.