Nikachhu Hydropower Project
Nikachhu Hydropower Project is a run-of-the-river project located between the junction of Nikachhu/Chhunabchhu and Nikachhu/Mangdechhu in Trongsa District, Bhutan. It is located almost 3 km from Chhunabchhu junction downstream.
Dam: 38 m high concrete gravity dam
Head Race Tunnel (HRT) : Diameter 4 m ; Length 12,144 m
PowerHouse: Design discharge hits two Pelton turbines with a capacity of 118 MW. The water is then discharged into the reservoir of Mangdechhu Hydropower Project
The complete instrumentation & monitoring work for the Dam, Power House, and Head race tunnel project was awarded to Encardio-rite. The scope of work included:
- Supply of all instruments
- Installation & monitoring of geotechnical instruments installed on surface & underground works
- Preparation of monitoring reports including data interpretation and analysis where required
- Calibration, testing, and maintenance
The instrumentation consisted of hundreds of geotechnical sensors including:
- Piezometer
- Uplift pressure cells
- Automatic water level recorder
- Digital Inclinometer
- Load cell, center hole
- Strain gage - rosette with no stress-strain gage
- Concrete pressure cell
- Shotcrete pressure cell
- Joint meter – linear
- Joint meter – tri-axial
- Temperature meter
- Borehole Extensometer (Multi-point)
- Plumbline – normal and inverted
- Bi-reflex target
- Automatic data acquisition system
- Automatic weather station
- Strong motion accelerographs
An automatic Data Acquisition System was installed and commissioned to collected data from the above geotechnical instruments. The data was collected automatically at required intervals.
Encardio-rite provided a comprehensive monthly monitoring report, combined for geotechnical and geodetic monitoring data on a weekly and monthly basis. Monitoring reports included interpretations of variations observed in instrument data with respect to the construction progress in the respective area.