Darbandikhan Dam
Dam and hydroelectric scheme, 3.0 km3 reservoir (2.5 km3 live); 240 MW in three Francis units, plus a 1.6 MW station for dam services in Iraq.
The record
- Country
- Iraq
- Location
- Darbandikhan
- Coordinates
- 35.113, 45.706
- Technology
- Dam and hydroelectric scheme
- Capacity
- 3.0 km3 reservoir (2.5 km3 live); 240 MW in three Francis units, plus a 1.6 MW station for dam services
- Capital cost
- —
- Stage
- Operational
- Owner or client
- Ministry of Water Resources
- Contractor
- Darbandikhan Group of Companies (J.A. Jones, Texas Contractors, Beton- und Monierbau, C.H. Tompkins); Polensky und Zoellner with Mitsubishi on the main hydro units
- Operator
- Ministry of Water Resources
- Finance
- Government of Iraq
- Award or start year
- 1956
- Commissioned
- 1961
Record last checked 2026-09-18.
History
- 1956
construction started
- 1961
dam completed
- 1967
right-bank landslide identified about 300 m from the dam body
- 1988
gates lifted and the lake emptied during fighting
- 1990
the three main hydropower units generated for the first time
- 2017-11
magnitude 7.3 earthquake cracked the dam body and displaced the crest by up to 27 cm
- 2019
uncontrolled rise of the lake forced the spillway into operation
Sources
2 references
Every field in the record above is taken from the references below. A field that none of them confirms prints as a dash.
- Mukhalad Abdullah, Nadhir Al-Ansari and Jan Laue, Water Resources Projects: Large Storage Dams, Journal of Earth Sciences and Geotechnical Engineering 9(4) 2019, pp. 109-135. diva-portal.org.
- MENA Water Review major projects register and PPP pipeline — compiled from procurer publications, development-bank project pages and trade reporting; each record names its source.
Implementation started in 1956 and the dam was completed in 1961. Clay core with a stone shell; height 128 m and crest width 535 m; maximum operating level 485 m a.s.l. with a design capacity of 3 billion m3 of which 2.5 billion m3 live; spillway of three 15 m by 15 m curved gates passing 5,700 m3/s at maximum operating level and 14,000 m3/s at maximum flood level. A 1.6 MW mini station was installed at the outset for dam services; the three main Francis units totalling 240 MW were installed by Polensky und Zoellner with turbines and generators from Mitsubishi and first generated in 1990. The paper also records the right-bank landslide found in 1967 and the damage from the magnitude 7.3 earthquake of 12 November 2017 whose epicentre was 30 km away, including a maximum horizontal crest displacement of 27 cm.