Pergau Dam

Pergau station or formally known as Stesen Janaelektrik Sultan Ismail Petra is a hydroelectric power station in Kuala Yong, Kelantan, Malaysia. It is located about 100 km west of Kota Bharu.

Power station

The power station is an underground hydroelectric power station, using 4 turbines each with 150 MW of installed capacity. The station is operated by Tenaga Nasional Berhad. It also holds the power of FAZ

Overview

The construction, which was undertaken by Balfour Beatty and Cementation International, started 1991 and completed in 2000. The dam began operation on 2003 and was officially opened in 2003.

Technical specifications

• Power Intake Structure - 4 bays.
• Spillway- concrete weir with chute and flip bucket.
• Power Tunnels - 4 tunnels.
• Underground powerhouse
• With 4 penstocks to power-trains comprising 4 turbines of 150MW each, 4 air-cooled generators of 180MVA each and 4 transformers of 180MVA each.

Notable facts

• Pergau Power Station has the second largest hydroelectric generation installed capacity in Malaysia, after the 2400MW installed capacity at Bakun Hydroelectric Project in Sarawak, East Malaysia.

Controversy

The Pergau dam has been called "the most controversial project in the history of British aid". At the insistence of Margaret Thatcher and with the support of her Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, the excessively costly dam was financed with the money of British taxpayers in order to secure a major arms deal, despite objections raised by civil servants in the British Foreign Office. After two parliamentary inquiries, protests by the World Development Movement and intense media coverage, in a landmark judgement the aid for Pergau was declared unlawful in 1994 in the case R v Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Ex p The World Development Movement [1995] 1 ALL ER 611. According to Sir Tim Lankester, a former British civil servant involved in the affair, the economics of the project was "unambiguously bad" since Malaysia could have produced electricity at much lower cost from other sources.

See also

• Tenaga Nasional