Page - 680 - in Book of Full Papers - Symposium Hydro Engineering

3.4. APPLICATION: SIAH BISHEH UPPER DAM, IRAN The Siah Bisheh Pumped-storage Hydroelectric Power Project is the first of this type in Iran. Located 125 km from Tehran it has an installed capacity of 1000 MW. The plant is intended to play a vital role in stabilizing the entire North Iran power grid, ensuring the safe operation of thermal power plants in the surrounding provinces. The main aims of fiber optic instrumentation are seepage at plinth level and active detection system with Heat Pulse Method technique. Beside this direct detection, the monitoring system can offer an effective analysis of the evolution of the detected anomaly, and a way to define reasonable threshold and trigger alerts if they are overcome. Moreover fiber optic systems are easily integrated with already existing traditional / standard monitoring systems. Distributed sensing offers the unique capacity of locating precisely the event using only few distributed sensors. Two independent systems are developed to monitor the existing dams. A dedicated control room where the instrumentation rack is located is specifically built on the crest of each dam (Fig. 5). Fig. 5 Sensing cable installation at the plinth of the upstream face of the upper dam and one monitoring cabinet The rack contains a display, the DiTemp unit with its accessories, the server PC where the analysis software is installed and the heating module necessary to heat up the cable at scheduled times. All the system is plugged into a network stabilizer and UPS in order to prevent general functionality in case of power failure. Accuracy and repeatability tests were carried out during implementation phases (Fig. 6 and Fig. 7). 680