Tsankov Kamak Hydro Power Plant
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The Tsankov Kamak Hydroelectric Power Plant, also Tsankov Kamak HPP, comprises an
arch dam An arch dam is a concrete dam that is curved upstream in plan. The arch dam is designed so that the force of the water against it, known as hydrostatic pressure, presses against the arch, causing the arch to straighten slightly and strengtheni ...
and
hydroelectric Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is Electricity generation, electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies 15% of the world's electricity, almost 4,210 TWh in 2023, which is more than all other Renewable energ ...
power plant A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the electricity generation, generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electr ...
(HPP) on the territory of the village of Mihalkovo, southwestern
Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...
. It is situated on the
Vacha River The Vacha () is a river in southern Bulgaria, a right tributary of the river Maritsa. The 112 km long Vacha is the 23rd longest river of Bulgaria and the second longest in the Rhodope Mountains, following the Arda (272 km), another major ...
in
Smolyan Province Smolyan Province (, ''Oblast Smolyan''; former name Smolyan okrug) is a province in Southern-central Bulgaria, located in the Rhodope Mountains, neighbouring Greece to the south. It is named after its administrative and industrial centre — the ...
, on the borders of
Pazardzhik Province Pazardzhik Province ( ''Oblast Pazardzhik'', former name Pazardzhik okrug) is a province in Southern Bulgaria, named after its administrative and industrial centre: the city of Pazardzhik. The territory is that is divided into 12 municipaliti ...
and
Plovdiv Province Plovdiv Province (: ''Oblast Plovdiv'', former name okrug, Plovdiv okrug) is a provinces of Bulgaria, province in central southern Bulgaria. It comprises 18 municipalities (общини, ''obshtini'', sing. общинa, ''obshtina'') on a territ ...
, roughly southwest of
Plovdiv Plovdiv (, ) is the List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, second-largest city in Bulgaria, 144 km (93 miles) southeast of the capital Sofia. It had a population of 490,983 and 675,000 in the greater metropolitan area. Plovdiv is a cultural hub ...
and downstream (north) of the town of Devin. It is a part of the
Dospat–Vacha Hydropower Cascade The Dospat–Vacha Hydroelectric Cascade () is situated in the western Rhodope Mountains of southern Bulgaria, on the territory of the Smolyan Province, Smolyan, Pazardzhik Province, Pazardzhik and Plovdiv Provinces. It is owned by the NEK EAD, Na ...
(500.2 MW) development of the Vacha River involving five dams and seven power stations in the provinces of Smolyan, Plovdiv and Pazardzhik, southeast of the capital
Sofia Sofia is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain, in the western part of the country. The city is built west of the Is ...
. The other four dams are
Dospat Dospat () is a town in the very south of Bulgaria, part of Smolyan Province, situated in the Rhodope Mountains, close to Dospat Dam. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Dospat Municipality. As of December 2010, the town had a popul ...
, Teshel, Vacha and
Krichim Krichim ( ) is a town in Bulgaria, located in the southwestern part of Plovdiv Province close to Perushtitsa. It lies at the foot of the Rhodopes' northern slopes in the plains of Thrace, 20 km southwest of Plovdiv. The river Vacha, an imp ...
. The Tsankov Kamak dam is the first double curvature arch dam in cupola shape in Bulgaria. It has a maximum dam height of . It is the second in the cascade series from the upstream end, and the last to be developed. Apart from power generation, the other objectives of the five projects are use of water resources for irrigation, drinking and household water supply. While the cascade development started in 1958, construction of the Kamak power plant started on 29 April 2004 and was completed in 2011. Initial estimated cost of the project was
Euro The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...
220 million financed by many banks and equipment manufacturers, including VA TECH Finance,
Bank Austria Creditanstalt UniCredit Bank Austria AG, branded and widely referred to as Bank Austria, is an Austrian bank, 99,9965% owned by Milan-based pan-European banking group UniCredit. Bank Austria was formed in 1991 by merger of Vienna's Länderbank and Zentralspar ...
,
BNP Paribas Fortis BNP Paribas Fortis is an international bank based in Belgium and a subsidiary of French banking group BNP Paribas. The bank was created in May 2009 after BNP Paribas acquired 75% of the Belgian Fortis Bank from the Federal Participation and Inve ...
,
Raiffeisen Zentralbank Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich A.G. (RZB) was a significant bank in Austria and the central institution of the Raiffeisen Banking Group (RBG) until its merger into its subsidiary Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) in 2017. It had subsidi ...
,
Société Générale Société Générale S.A. (), colloquially known in English-speaking countries as SocGen (), is a French multinational universal bank and financial services company founded in 1864. It is registered in downtown Paris and headquartered nearby i ...
, and Credit Suisse First Boston. However, the final cost of the project has far outstripped the original estimates due to topography, geology and also possible corruption, which were not assessed at the investigation stage of the project. The carbon emission reduction due to building the Tsankov Kamak HPP is assessed at about 200,000 t CO2 (228,000 tons of СО2 including the four rehabilitation projects of the cascade). This credit is transferred to the Austrian carbon-credit program under the Joint Implementation Project mechanism which was agreed for the project within the framework of the
Kyoto Protocol The was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that global warming is oc ...
to partially meet the project costs. For the reduced emissions,
Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
compensates Bulgaria at the rate US$10 per ton of
carbon emissions Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities intensify the greenhouse effect. This contributes to climate change. Carbon dioxide (), from burning fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum, oil, and natural gas, is the main cause of climate chan ...
. The Joint Implementation Project has two components, one is the Implementation of the Tsankov Kamak HPP and the other is the rehabilitation of the electro-mechanical components of the other four projects in the cascade development. Two more HPPs, the Vacha I and the Vacha II, with total installed capacity of 20.6 MW, are located in the lower part of the cascade.


Natural landscape

The Tsankov Kamak arch dam, associated works and the HPP station are located on the
Vacha River The Vacha () is a river in southern Bulgaria, a right tributary of the river Maritsa. The 112 km long Vacha is the 23rd longest river of Bulgaria and the second longest in the Rhodope Mountains, following the Arda (272 km), another major ...
, which is the second longest river in Bulgaria. It raises in the
Rhodope Rhodope may refer to: * Rhodope (mythology), several figures of Greek mythology * Rhodope Mountains, in Bulgaria and Greece * Rhodope (regional unit), of Greece * Rhodope (province), a Roman and Byzantine province * 166 Rhodope, an asteroid * Rhodop ...
hill ranges which borders
Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...
. It is situated on the borders of
Smolyan Province Smolyan Province (, ''Oblast Smolyan''; former name Smolyan okrug) is a province in Southern-central Bulgaria, located in the Rhodope Mountains, neighbouring Greece to the south. It is named after its administrative and industrial centre — the ...
,
Pazardzhik Province Pazardzhik Province ( ''Oblast Pazardzhik'', former name Pazardzhik okrug) is a province in Southern Bulgaria, named after its administrative and industrial centre: the city of Pazardzhik. The territory is that is divided into 12 municipaliti ...
and
Plovdiv Province Plovdiv Province (: ''Oblast Plovdiv'', former name okrug, Plovdiv okrug) is a provinces of Bulgaria, province in central southern Bulgaria. It comprises 18 municipalities (общини, ''obshtini'', sing. общинa, ''obshtina'') on a territ ...
, roughly southwest of
Plovdiv Plovdiv (, ) is the List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, second-largest city in Bulgaria, 144 km (93 miles) southeast of the capital Sofia. It had a population of 490,983 and 675,000 in the greater metropolitan area. Plovdiv is a cultural hub ...
and downstream (north) of the town of Devin. The dam site is located about downstream of the confluence of the Vacha River and the Gashnya River, in the valley known as Gashnya Valley. The catchment area at the dam site is and the annual flow is assessed to be approximately 650 million cubic metres with an average inflow of per second. The dam has been designed for a gross storage of 111 million cubic metres. The hydropower potential in the river between Sredna and Vacha had remained unexploited under the five dams development initiative, but is now utilized through the Tsankov Kamak project. The reservoir submergence is in rocky terrain, which is deforested and has unproductive vegetation. The catchment is highly rugged and mountainous with high altitudes, high watershed flats, deep ravines and large tectonic kettles. The upper and lower course of the river flows through deep cut banks. In the narrow valley stretch of the Vacha River where the project is located, the geological formation consists of sound
granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...
s and
gneiss Gneiss (pronounced ) is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock. It is formed by high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic processes acting on formations composed of igneous or sedimentary rocks. This rock is formed under p ...
ic formations except for a small patch of about , which is the fractured zone of
mylonite Mylonite is a fine-grained, compact metamorphic rock produced by dynamic recrystallization of the constituent minerals resulting in a reduction of the grain size of the rock. Mylonites can have many different mineralogical compositions; it is a ...
s, which was filled up with concrete. The dam’s rock foundation has seven types of rocks with elastic modules values varying from 12,000 MPa to 72,000 MPa and a Poisson’s ratio varying between 0.24 and 0.27. The damping ratio of 10% for this foundation has been adopted in the dynamic analysis. The intake structure and the pressure tunnel pass through difficult geological formations. Due to this geological feature, particularly at the intake structure, an area of about was required to be plugged in the Gashnia Valley.


Construction

The Natsionalna Elektricheska Kompania EAD (NEK EAD) was awarded the contract to the project in 2001, and in November 2003 they forwarded their plans to start construction of the project to the Government of Bulgaria. At the end of the year 2003, Alpine Mayreder, an Austrian company, was awarded the civil works contract of the project. The equipment supply and installations were awarded to Austrian group of suppliers, Andritz Hydro for HEM – equipment and Pöyry Energy GmbH for engineering with Energoproekt Hydropower as a Bulgarian Co-designer of the project The project was financed by export and commercial credits, which were finalized in
Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
on 14 November 2003; the financial credit without any backup guarantee by the Government of Bulgaria. The total value of the financing contract was roughly €220 million (€216 million has been specifically cited), with bank security provided by the Oesterreichische Kontrolbank Aktiengellschaft. The balance amount was financed by the commercial credits provided by VA TECH Finance,
Bank Austria Creditanstalt UniCredit Bank Austria AG, branded and widely referred to as Bank Austria, is an Austrian bank, 99,9965% owned by Milan-based pan-European banking group UniCredit. Bank Austria was formed in 1991 by merger of Vienna's Länderbank and Zentralspar ...
,
BNP Paribas Fortis BNP Paribas Fortis is an international bank based in Belgium and a subsidiary of French banking group BNP Paribas. The bank was created in May 2009 after BNP Paribas acquired 75% of the Belgian Fortis Bank from the Federal Participation and Inve ...
,
Raiffeisen Zentralbank Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich A.G. (RZB) was a significant bank in Austria and the central institution of the Raiffeisen Banking Group (RBG) until its merger into its subsidiary Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) in 2017. It had subsidi ...
,
Société Générale Société Générale S.A. (), colloquially known in English-speaking countries as SocGen (), is a French multinational universal bank and financial services company founded in 1864. It is registered in downtown Paris and headquartered nearby i ...
, and Credit Suisse First Boston who organized the bank credits. Insurance coverage for the export credit of €100 million was provided by Coface of France; Hermes of Germany; EKN of Sweden and Egap of the Czech Republic apart from the
Oesterreichische Kontrollbank The ''Oesterreichische Kontrollbank'' (OeKB, ) is a special-purpose financial institution in Austria, headquartered in Vienna. It was founded in 1946 and is owned by Austria's main banks. While technically a private-sector organization, part of ...
(OeKB) which has also covered political and the commercial risks. Construction of the project was considered a challenge in view of the terrain and geologically weak structural region. The building of a new road of about in difficult terrain, with frequent landslides and rockfalls, caused problems in road construction. This significantly increased the cost of the project up to roughly €500 million. Civil construction works involved six million cubic metres of excavation, two million cubic metres of filling, 850,000 cubic metres of batching and mixing of concrete and placing 100,000 anchors with a total combined length of about . Concreting was done in 3 metre lifts. A service road of 6 metres in width was built on top of the dam. Apart from the Christian Schild and 60 engineers of the Alpine Slovakia and contractors of civil engineering works of the project, some 1200 Bulgarian workers were involved in its construction at one point. Work was carried out continuously, involving 535,000 cubic metres of concrete delivered by a crane of 26 tons capacity, which was erected across the river over the dam. The concreting of the dam began in October 2007 and was completed in January 2010.


Project features


Dam

The double curved arch dam is in height with a reservoir water spread area of . It has four spillway blocks designed for a maximum flood discharge of , each provided with radial gates, and has a pressure shaft of in width and in length which is steel lined and bifurcated at the lower end to feed the turbines from the intake on the upstream on the left bank of the dam. It feeds two units of 40 MW capacity turbine generators (Francis Turbines) housed in a surface powerhouse, a tailrace channel of length, and a balancing channel of length. These features are elaborated further with relevant design details. It has gross storage capacity of 111 million cubic metres. The Tsankov Kamak dam has a total length of 459.4 m and crest level of EL 688.50 m, with 22 cantilever blocks which are "interconnected by a system of shear boxes", which are tangential to the axis at the crest, and the gravity blocks abut on the left and right banks. Horizontal sections of the arch dam are of parabolic shape with fixed thickness. A series of thick shear key locks on both surfaces of each cantilever block are provided to achieve uniform distribution of shear force between the blocks. The dam width at the top is 8.8 metres and at the foundation the base is . The curved part of the arch dam is 340 metres in length and its chord length is . The maximum reservoir water level is EL 685.00 m and the minimum draw down level is EL 670.00 m with a storage capacity of 41 million cubic metres. The spillway has four bays located in the middle section of the dam controlled by radial gates of 8 m x 8 m size each designed to pass a 1 in 1000 year frequency flood of , which raises the water level to EL 687.42 m (all gates open condition) thus allowing for a free board of to top of the dam. The spillway energy dissipation chute has aeration baffle blocks. Over the dam height of 130.5 metres, five galleries are provided in the body of the dam; the gallery at the bottom has been used initially for grouting of the foundation and for drainage and four horizontal inspection galleries at different elevations (at interval). The reservoir stretches over a surface area of and a length of . The filling of the reservoir was started in June 2010 and completed over roughly 15 weeks. A reservoir management plan envisages fish farming and reservoir operation and maintenance along the periphery of the reservoir and its tributaries. Two bottom outlets in the form of steel pipes of diameter, each of length have been provided in the body of the dam which facilitates emptying of the reservoir in any emergency; it takes about 11–12 hours to empty the reservoir. The outlets have been provided with slide gate controls on the downstream end. The stilling basin of the spillway is also used for energy dissipation of the outflows from the bottom outlets. The penstock/pressure shaft is in the form of a steel lined pressure shaft which is diameter to carry a discharge of for power generation. It is in length (with 10% slope). and bifurcates into two at the bottom end to feed two turbines, each of 40 MW capacity. Slope protection in the long stretch of the reservoir spread (up to a surface area of ) also involved concreting to the extent of to take care of draw down condition for operating the power stations of the cascade under two daily peaks in the morning and evening.


Power station

The surface power station at the end of pressure shafts has two units, each of 40 MW capacity (Francis turbines) operating under a gross head of and an average net head is . The annual energy generation is about 185 GWh. This also has beneficial impact on other cascade development projects in the basin as the energy generation gets enhanced by a 48% increase. The power station is run as a peaking station with two peaks, one in the morning and the other in the evening. With the completion of the Tsankov Kamak HPP, and the rehabilitation of the other HPPs, and all stations connected to a common grid, the efficiency of the whole cascade is improved and energy production rose by a further 16 GWh per annum for the cascade. The design output of Francis turbines is 41,171 kW each, the turbine speed is 428.6 r.p.m., the generator rating is 46 MVA, and generation voltage is 10.5 kV. An outdoor switch yard is provided next to the surface powerhouse with main two step up transformers of 50 MVA rating and voltage ratio is 10.5/240 kV. The powerhouse is operated both under the remote control mode from the south regional dispatching control and automatically under the local control mode.


References


External links


Hydro power project Tsankov Kamak

Hydropower Station Tsankov Kamak - ALPINE BAU
{{Vacha dams Hydroelectric power stations in Bulgaria Dams in Bulgaria Arch dams Buildings and structures in Smolyan Province