Construction
The Natsionalna Elektricheska Kompania EAD (NEK EAD) was awarded the contract to the project in 2001, and in November 2003 they forwarded their plans to start construction of the project to the Government of Bulgaria. At the end of the year 2003, Alpine Mayreder, an Austrian company, was awarded the civil works contract of the project. The equipment supply and installations were awarded to Austrian group of suppliers, Andritz Hydro for HEM – equipment and Pöyry Energy GmbH for engineering with Energoprojekt as a Bulgarian Co-designer of the project The project was financed by export and commercial credits, which were finalized in Vienna on 14 November 2003; the financial credit without any backup guarantee by the Government of Bulgaria. The total value of the financing contract was roughly €220 million (€216 million has been specifically cited), with bank security provided by the Oesterreichische Kontrolbank Aktiengellschaft. The balance amount was financed by the commercial credits provided by VA TECH Finance, Bank Austria Creditanstalt, BNP Paribas Fortis, Raiffeisen Zentralbank, Société Générale, and Credit Suisse First Boston who organized the bank credits. Insurance coverage for the export credit of €100 million was provided by Coface of France; Hermes of Germany; EKN of Sweden and Egap of the Czech Republic apart from the Oesterreichische Kontrolbank Aktiengellschaft (OeKB) which has also covered political and the commercial risks.
Construction of the project was considered a challenge in view of the terrain and geologically weak structural region. The building of a new road of about 22 kilometres (14 mi) in difficult terrain, with frequent landslides and rockfalls, caused problems in road construction. This significantly increased the cost of the project up to roughly €500 million. Civil construction works involved six million cubic metres of excavation, two million cubic metres of filling, 850,000 cubic metres of batching and mixing of concrete and placing 100,000 anchors with a total combined length of about 400 kilometres (250 mi). Concreting was done in 3 metre lifts. A service road of 6 metres in width was built on top of the dam. Apart from the Christian Schild and 60 engineers of the Alpine Slovakia and contractors of civil engineering works of the project, some 1200 Bulgarian workers were involved in its construction at one point. Work was carried out continuously, involving 535,000 cubic metres of concrete delivered by a crane of 26 tons capacity, which was erected across the river over the dam. The concreting of the dam began in October 2007 and was completed in January 2010.
Read more about this topic: Tsankov Kamak Hydro Power Plant
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