Tarnița – Lăpuștești Hydroelectric Power Station

Tarnița–Lăpuștești Hydroelectric Power Station
Location of Tarnița–Lăpuștești Hydroelectric Power Station in Romania
Country	Romania
Location	Lăpuștești, Râșca, Cluj County
Coordinates	46°42′50″N 23°16′07″E
Status	Under construction
Construction began	15 June 2008[1]
Construction cost	Estimated €1.3 billion[2][3][4] (US$1.5 billion)
Dam and spillways
Impounds	Someșul Cald River
Website www.hidrotarnita.ro

The Tarnița–Lăpuștești Hydropower Plant is a proposed hydroelectric pumped-storage project on the Someșul Cald River in Cluj County, Romania. If built it would be the largest hydro-electric load balancing system in Romania. During the night, when the demand is low and electricity is cheap because of powerplants which generate electricity continuously, such as the Cernavodă nuclear power plant, it will use electricity to pump water up the hill, while during the day, it will use the hydro energy to generate electricity.

Location

The Tarnița–Lăpuștești power station will be located 35 km (22 mi) from Cluj Napoca,^[5] on the left bank of the Someşul Cald River valley in the area of the existing Lake Tarnița and the Lăpuștești village, in Râșca commune.

Power generation

The power station will have four turbines, each capable of producing 250 megawatts, for a total of 1000 megawatts.^[6]

Schedule

Construction has not started.^[when?] The Romanian state is looking for investors. The strategic environmental assessment (SEA) procedure is at the beginning, the environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedure did not start yet, as the project consultants admitted publicly on 17 November 2010.^{[citation needed]} In 2016 the Romanian government stated that several smaller projects were being considered instead.^[7] In 2019, Romania’s Forecast and Strategy National Committee (CNSP) started a procedure for finding a private partner for the Tarnița–Lăpuștești pumped-storage hydropower plant.^[8]

See also

• Hydro-electricity
• Iron Gate I Hydro Power Plant
• Lotru-Ciunget Hydropower Plant

References

1. Work began on the huge Tarnița–Lăpuștești Hydropower Plant (in Romanian)^{[permanent dead link‍]}
2. ME reevalueaza hidrocentrala de la Tarnița–Lăpuștești la 1,3 miliarde euro și urgentează proiectul (in Romanian)
3. The power plant will cost around 1 billion euros (in Romanian)^{[permanent dead link‍]}
4. World Bank will finance up to 25% of the total cost of the project (in Romanian)
5. Location of the power plant (in Romanian)
6. The power plant will have a final power generation capacity of 1000 MW (in Romanian)^{[permanent dead link‍]}
7. "State mulls scrapping development of 1 GW hydro plant". 10 September 2016.
8. "State to seek private partner for pumped-storage HPP Tarnița–Lăpuștești". balkangreenenergynews.com. March 4, 2019. Retrieved December 17, 2020.