Relocation of a power plant from Austria to Turkey
Location: Voitsberg Austria – Canakale Turkey (approx. 1,600 km)
Execution time: 16 months
Number of trucks: 694
Weight of dismantled devices: 12,000 t
Heaviest element: 270 t
The Voitsberg project consited of dismantling and relocation of a coal power plant with a capacity of 320 MW, which was sold due to the reduction in demand for electricity after the crisis in 2008. It was one of the largest dismantling projects in Europe carried out in 2014. The scale of the project is impressive – the boiler house itself was over 100 meters high, which is over 1/3 height of the Eiffel Tower.
The project was long and demanding – the contract was signed in Q2 2014, the factory has been shut down in Q2/Q3 2015 (over a year of formalities) and then the relocation process lasted over 16 months. The operation of the plant was resumed in June 2018. The relocation process included dismantling, transportation and re-assembly of highly specialized, advanced equipment such as steam boilers, steam turbine generators, a flue gas desulfurization unit and various kinds of electrostatic filters.
PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED AND HOW THEY WERE SOLVED
In case of this project, the client did not delegate any of his employees to observe and document the dismantling process. It was a big obstacle, because the internal support of the client’s staff is invaluable, especially during the re-assembly process, when the contractor directly decides where the machines will stand and what the grounds for placing them that way are. Such responsibility shouldn’t lay only on the contractor, as they are not the ones who are going to use the infrastructure later on. The client’s employees are also helpful at the dismantling stage itself – they often have detailed knowledge about specialized equipment which allows to prepare simple documentation. In such a situation, the assembly process will no longer be a major challenge. Furthermore, at the last stage of the works, it was necessary to dismantle the elevator – which meant that the time needed to climb to the very top of the plant took over 20 minutes!
In case of the Voitsberg power plant relocation project, activities related to the preparation of documentation that allowed for the re-assembly of the plant were extremely important. It was the well-prepared documentation that played a crucial role in the delivery of the entire project.
– Michael Pichler, Dipl. Ing., Voitsberg relocation project supervisor on the seller’s side