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Tajikistan building 14 small hydropower plants

15 February 2013 16:50 (UTC+04:00)
Tajikistan building 14 small hydropower plants

By Aynur Jafarova

The construction of 14 new small hydropower plants is presently underway in the remote regions of Tajikistan.

"Within the state program on the construction of small HPPs in hard-to-reach and remote regions of Tajikistan, currently 14 small HPPs are being constructed. Therefore, the number of small HPPs in the country will reach 296 units till the end of this year," the Tajik Ministry of Energy and Industry said.

According to the ministry, the 282 small HPPs available in the Central Asian state have total capacity of 25,200 kWt. A total of 17 new small HPPs with total capacity of over 1,800 kWt started operating in 2012. Earlier it was reported that by 2015 it is planned to build 70 more small HPPs in Tajikistan.

Meanwhile, experts believe that Tajikistan needs construction of middle and large HPPs which will allow regulating water and are more suitable for exploration work than small ones.

According to the experts, water freezes or disappears in winter and it causes power shortages in Tajikistan when the demand for power increases due to cold weather.

Furthermore, production of 1 kWt of power per hour in small HPPs is twice as expensive compared with large ones like Rogun HPP, secretary of Tajik national headquarters of the international commission for large dams, Hamid Alifov, believes.

Earlier Tajikistan's energy ministry and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) discussed the state and prospects of bilateral cooperation in the energy sector and in particular the reconstruction and modernization of existing small HPPs in the country's regions.

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