DUSHANBE, May 10, 2013, Asia-Plus  -- An operation on replacement of the third rotor wheel at the Norak hydroelectric power plant (HPP) has been delayed.

“Installation of the third rotor wheel was expected to be completed this spring, but most likely, it will be completed in autumn,” an official source at Barqi Tojik (the state-owned utility responsible for generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity in Tajikistan) told Asia-Plus in an interview.

According to him specialists from Ukraine’s DneprSpetsGiddroEnergoMontazh are currently repairing the revolving valve at Unit 8.  Meanwhile, the work on installation of the third rotor wheel has not started yet.

We will recall that Ukraine’s transport aircraft Antonov-225 airlifted the rotor wheel for the Norak hydroelectric power plant (HPP) into Dushanbe on October 17, 2012. 

This rotor wheel and spare parts delivered from Turboatom (Kharkov) are intended for modernization of Unit 8 of the plant.  The modernization will allow increasing the unit’s capacity to 355 megawatts.

It is already the third rotor wheel delivered to Tajikistan from Ukraine for the Norak HPP over the past four years.

Barqi Tojik and Ukraine’s Turboatom signed a contract on modernization of Norak HPP''s units in Dushanbe in October 2009.  Modernization is expected to increase the station’s capacity by 10 percent.

The Norak Dam is an earth fill embankment dam on the Vakhsh River in Tajikistan. 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.