Upper Beyhan Dam and HEPP

The Upper Beyhan Hydropower Plant is located on the Murat River on the outskirts of Elazığ, a city in eastern Türkiye.

The main civil works involved the construction of a 1,350,000 m³ roller-compacted-concrete (RCC) gravity dam with an integrated conventional concrete water intake, penstocks encasement, spillway, and a power plant.  The dam is 86 meters tall from the thalweg and has a crest length of 364 meters. The total volume of rock and earth excavation for the dam structures amounted to 7 million m³. About 200,000 m³ concrete were used for the spillway construction to accommodate an anticipated peak flow of 10,500 m³/s.

Three diversion tunnels, 535 meters, 572 meters, and 609 meters long respectively, excavated to a diameter of 9 meters, and lined with reinforced concrete to an operating diameter of 7 meters. They all were used to reroute the Murat River around the dam site, allowing for the construction of the (RCC) dam across the main river channel. The powerhouse furnished with three (3) vertical axis turbine-generator units with a total installed renewable power capacity of 582.10 MW. The project also included the construction of a 100-kilometer long, 3-phase 400 kV overhead power line. About 60,000 m³ of earth were excavated, 7,000 m³ of concrete were laid, 3,500 metric tons of steel were consumed to erect 238 lattice towers, and 2,500 metric tons of aluminum cables were used for the installation of a transmission line, to transfer the generated power from the Upper Beyhan hydroelectric station to the national grid.

The project started in 2010 and was commissioned in 2015. A joint venture (JV) led by Özaltın Construction Company with Cengiz Construction Company carried out the civil works within the time frame set by the contract.