Bilfinger has received an order to support Austria’s VERBUND Hydro Power GmbH with the construction of the 480 MW Limberg III pumped storage power plant in Kaprun.

The order has a value of more than €20 million ($22.3 million), and Bilfinger will deliver and assume responsibility for all work on the pressure piping and draft tube gates for the hydropower plant. The contract is expected to run from October 2021 to June 2025.

A team from Bilfinger Industrial Services Austria is responsible for the engineering, manufacture, delivery, assembly and commissioning of the pressure piping, which will secure the underground connection of the two high mountain reservoirs Mooserboden (2,036 m) and Wasserfallboden (1,680 m).

Bilfinger said assembly of the piping in the pressure shaft presents a particular challenge: due to tight scheduling, it is not possible to follow the usual procedure, which is to transport the individual pipe sections up the mountain, from where they are roped down into the pressure shaft and only then welded together. Instead, the 35 pipes (each weighing 45 tons) will be hoisted from the valley floor through the 585-m-long and 42-degree-inclined pressure shaft, temporarily stored and welded directly at the same time as the other work in 48-hour shifts.

In addition to the pressure piping, Bilfinger is designing, manufacturing and assembling the draft tube gates for the new hydropower plant, each of which is 5 m wide and 1.7 m high.

The Limberg III pumped storage power plant is part of the Kaprun power plant group. The project was approved in 2017 and ceremonial start of construction on the project was in September 2021. Commissioning is planned for 2025.

“High-performance pumped storage power plants such as Limberg III are crucial for the success of the energy turnaround: our new power unit ensures that electricity can be temporarily and in a highly efficiently stored in times of surplus and flexibly fed back into the electricity system within a very short time when required. With such plants, we can contribute to a sustainable electricity supply in Austria in the long term,” says Karl Heinz Gruber, managing director of VERBUND Hydro Power.

Bilfinger is an international industrial services provider and is primarily active in Europe, North America and the Middle East.

VERBUND is one of the largest producers of electricity from hydropower in Europe. Close to 100% of its electricity generation comes from climate friendly, renewable hydropower.