Large hydro-electric infrastructures with minimal environmental impact in Chile — ULMA Begira
Ulma Construction

Large hydro-electric infrastructures with minimal environmental impact in Chile

This hydro-electric plant is an example of sustainability, also using the river water to generate renewable energy, as the flow is constant throughout the year. The La Higuera plant generates renewable energy from the Rivers Tinguiririca and Azufre, with an extremely low environmental impact.
Large hydro-electric infrastructures with minimal environmental impact in Chile
Jul 26, 2013

450,000 homes receive power from the plant, which has an installed capacity of 155 MW and an average production of 750 GWh/year. The water is conveyed through channels and pipes to the powerhouse, which has two generator units equipped with vertical turbines.

The project involved building the powerhouse, a valve house, tunnels, water intakes, etc., using more than 100,000 concrete cubes.

ULMA Construcción Solution

ULMA supplied various auxiliary elements for this building work:

 

. ORMA vertical formwork, combined with EUC frames, for one-sided walls with a height of 4.8 m.

. BTM formwork shored with T-60 towers, ALUPROP and BRIO shoring, for concreting slabs of over 1.5 m thick.

. COMAIN, NEVI and BTM formwork for building vertical and horizontal structural elements.

. BRIO multidirectional formwork, configured as a ladder for worksite access.

La Higuera was registered under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (MDL) in March 2006. It is the world’s largest hydro-electric plant to be registered and the first in Chile.