Nizao Hydro

                During my Christmas visit, Caco, one of the brothers of the girls I visit in Roblegal took me on a tour of hydro plants on the Nizao river. He has worked at the hydro schemes for 7 years so can take people to see them. Interesting, when I returned from the day, I asked the girls if they had visited these sites, sure they had. They told me they had not and had no interest in seeing them. I still don’t know what to do with that knowledge. These girls are both educated. The sites are lovely…that is, the surrounding countryside is. To me, of course, though I recognize the environmental destructive nature of hydro (several communities had to be moved out of the steep valley above the largest dam we visited, the dam at Valesia.

                Like so many rivers I’ve seen here, the Nizao is mostly a boulder field river bottom with the river trickling along somewhere in the middle of the grey width.

The first dam on the Nizao. The hydro installation is below me on the right. It's 1 megaWatt. A small lake is created above the dam.

The Nizao below the Valdesia dam.

The dam and spillway as seen from the approach road.

Caco and friends atop the dam.

view down the spilway.

The lake formed by the dam. The dam is about 160 meters high. Communities had to be moved from the valley to accomodate the lake.

Turbine floor. Each is 25 MegaWatt. It's a peaking plant, run only 3 hours a day. It was off when we visited.

One of the turbines seen on the floor below.

We arrived just at dark. This turbine is the one Caco worked with/on for that last 7 years. It's 100 kW (about 133 hp...the power of a medium sized passenger car) and uses a 30' drop from the aqueduct that runs through Roblegal.

The 1 MW turbine along the Nizao.