Daily Times

A consortium consisting of China North Water Engineering Group and its local Pakistani partner, MMP Company has signed a consultancy contract with the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) for the fifth phase of the Tarbela Hydropower Plant expansion project, Gwadar Pro reported on Friday.

Construction of the plant began in 1968, and it started storing water and generating electricity in 1976.

The Tarbela complex has multiple functions, including irrigation, flood control, and power generation.

It irrigates an area of 170,000 square kilometers and has a reservoir capacity of 13.7 billion cubic meters.

The dam, an earth-fill embankment with a sloping core wall, spans 2,743 meters along its crest and reaches a maximum height of 143 meters, making it the world’s largest earth-fill dam by volume.

The plant initially had an installed capacity of 2,100 megawatts (MW), which has since been expanded to 4,888 MW.

The fifth expansion of the Tarbela Hydropower Plant will convert the existing irrigation tunnel number 5 into a water diversion tunnel for power generation.

This upgrade will add 1,530 MW of capacity, increasing the plant’s total installed capacity to 6,418 MW.

This expansion marks a significant achievement for China North Water Engineering Group, following their previous consultancy work on the Diamer-Basha Dam in Pakistan.

It is also another major international project financed by the World Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in which the company is directly involved.

The Tarbela Hydropower Plant is located on the Indus River, at the border between the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Punjab, approximately 64 kilometers from Islamabad.