DUSHANBE, February 19, 2010, Asia-Plus  -- By president’s order modernization of power plants of Vakhsh and Varzob cascades will begin this year, Nozir Yodgori, a spokesman for Barqi Tojik power holding (Tajik electricity supplier), told Asia-Plus today.

According to him, modernization is expected to bring a total capacity of these hydropower plants to some 360-366 megawatt.

“The Vakhsh cascade includes Tzentralnaya (Central), Perepadnaya and Golovnaya (Main) power plants with a total capacity of 200 megawatt and the Varzob cascade includes Varzob-1, Varzob-2 and Varzob-3 power plants with a total capacity of 5 megawatt,” said Yodgori, “Modernization will allow increasing the total capacity of power plants of the Vakhsh cascade to 350 megawatt and the total capacity of power plants of the Varzob cascade to 16 megawatt.”

According to him, the work on modernization of these hydropower plants will be financed by Barqi Tojik power holding.