BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 12
By Tamilla Mammadova – Trend:
Refurbishment of Georgia’s Enguri hydroelectric power station (HPP) will start on February 15, Trend reports via Georgian media.
Work on the diversion tunnel of Georgia's largest hydropower plant will last for three and a half months and will be completed by the end of May.
According to the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Enguri HPP Levan Mebonia, by suspending the station, the Georgian electricity system will lose 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity.
The project will be implemented with the financial support of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
Meanwhile, the start of repair work on the Enguri HPP tunnel has been delayed several times. Initially, rehabilitation was planned in 2018, and then in 2019.
The Enguri HPP and the downstream Vardnili HPP Cascade were built during the 1960-70s as part of the same scheme. Enguri HPP (5 units of 260MW capacity each) releases its water into the Vardnili HPP water channel, where four power plants were initially in operation. Three of these plants were destroyed during the civil war in the early 1990s. The Enguri HPP itself suffered from lack of maintenance and until recently only four out of five units were operating at 80% of their capacity.
The EBRD has been involved in the refurbishment of the Enguri Hydro Power Plant since 1998, initially with civil works on the dam, later with the refurbishment of the units at the power plant.
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