The Shamkhor hydro development

Abstract

1. A river valley with an inselberg structure was selected as the site of the hydro development. The inselberg — a residual upland located in the middle of the valley — is used as the connecting link is the unified barrier for joining the channel and floodplain dams. This considerably reduced the volume of earthworks and construction time. 2. Placement of soils from useful cuts in the dams markedly reduced transportation costs on hauling soils, and the location of borrow pits in the flowage lands reduced the areas of farmlands being taken away for construction. 3. The selected variant of the location, layout, and design of an individual irrigation intake instead of the original variant combined with the intake of the hydrostation provides continuous delivery of water for irrigation and domestic drinking water supply in a wide range of reservoir water levels with a considerable reduction of investments in the irrigation structures of the hydro development. 4. The implemented variant of diverting the Shamkhorchai River (right tributary of the Kura River) into the upper pool of the hydro development instead of the original variant of diversion into the lower pool provided an additional runoff into the reservoir and generation of additional electricity, eliminated the need to construct structures for diverting the Shamkhorchai River into the lower pool, and reduced the construction cost.