BEIJING – China has come up with an innovative plan to save the dyingTarbela Dam project in Pakistan.
China has inserted the largest ever 120-meter steel pipe, into theHimalayas to control silt deposit, enabling increase of power generationcapacity in Tarbela dam.
The silt at the bottom of the hydropower station was an impediment thatneeded to be removed before expansion the dam that was announced in 2013.To combat the issue, Chinese engineers decided made use of airlift for siltremoval by inserting a 120 meters’ long pipe, the largest in the world,into the bottom of the hydropower station. The due process took four monthsto remove about 14,000 cubic meters of sludge.
In 2013, Pakistan had decided to expand the Tarbela Hydropower Stationunder Chinese assistance as per the initiates of BRI. Tarbela hydropowerstation is located in the fault zone of the Himalayas, which greatlyincreases the difficulty of the extension project due to a large inflow ofsediments. However, the newly-inserted steel pipe helps to airlift thesediments, increasing approximately 1.41 million kilowatts of electricitysubsequently.
The Tarbela 4th extension hydropower station is currently the largest powersupply base in Pakistan, with an average annual power generation of 11.5billion kWh, quoted Chinese media on Monday in local paper.
Read Top Stories
It also quoted that despite Chinese Three Gorges Dam being the largesthydropower station in the world and the largest hydropower constructionproject ever undertaken in China, its annual power generation is about 100billion kWh, amounting to 20% of the national hydropower generation.However, Chinese engineers did not face such an issue with these damsrelating to removal of soil or sediment at large.
Regarding the matter, Pakistan Minister for Water Resources Makhdoom KhusroBakhtiar told Senate earlier that the total sediments deposited in Tarbelareservoir from 1974 to 2017 amount to 4.731 Million Acre Feet (MAF).
Pakistan currently faces a huge deficit of electricity which it is seekingto overcome with Chinese assistance while it helps construct different kindof power projects under the initiatives of China Pakistan Economic Corridor- flagship project of Belt and Road Initiates.
