Opening of the spillway gate - Banja Dam

Since in 2013, Devoll Hydropower (Albanian-registered company owned by the norwegian Statkraft) are working on three new power projects in the country, one of which is the Banja Dam and reservoir.

Last year, the project reached a major milestone as the filling of the Banja reservoir started.

A few month after, and during the commissioning of the spillway, it gave me the opportunity to film with my drone the first opening of the spillway gates. The water was allowed to stream down the fresh spillway.

My silent footage shows the event from a drone's eye view. The Banja dam is now at the water level of 175 masl .

Project overview:
Banja reservoir will be approximately 16km long and will contain approximately 178 million m3 live storage of water

The hydropower plant is equipped with two vertical Francis units with a total installed capacity of 66 MW and a horizontal Francis unit of 7 MW capacity for ecological flow. Total installed capacity is 73 MW.

Check it out below.