| Work Detail |
The Nahueve dam was paralyzed due to budget renegotiations with the contracting company. Currently, it has reached 80% of its construction.
The Nahueve multipurpose plant reached 80% completion, but the work was stopped due to renegotiations between the provincial government and the Transitory Union of Companies (UTE) Rovella Carranza and Special Metalworking Industries. This firm is in charge of the construction of the work. The goal is to finish it by the end of this year.
The new president of the Neuquén Investment Agency (ADI-NQN) Leandro López spoke with Energía On and expressed that the plant “would be missing 20% ??of execution. "We are in a process of renegotiation and discussion with the contractor to optimize and establish a schedule that is as quick as possible and tied to the financing possibilities that the Province has."
The contractor had already submitted million-dollar claims for default interest and redetermination of prices. In January 2023, the request was for 207 million pesos from the provincial government. In October they reached an agreement based on the delay in the work due to bad weather and the extension of the schedule for the importation of equipment.
In November 2023, it was announced that the 2024 budget included an item of 6,421 million pesos for the work. It was defined with the objective of clearing the two months of delay caused by the increase in the rivers flow. With the intense rains that occurred after half of last year, the facilities were filled with mud, so the spaces had to be reconditioned and work suspended.
Initially, the work required an investment of 21 million dollars. Some 15 million were covered by financing from the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, which is administered by the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena), while the remaining amount comes from the provincial government.
The expectation, according to López, is that the work will be completed in 2024 after four years of work. Civil works remain to be completed, "particularly concrete ones," explained the head of ADI-NQN.
In December, the Neuquén Investment Agency was approved as a generating agent for the Wholesale Electricity Market (MEM) to inject energy into the grid from this hydroelectric exploitation. The news was announced through Resolution 968/2023 of the Official Gazette, signed by the then Secretary of Energy, Flavia Royon.
The plant is made up of a weir with about six hectares of water; a small dam about six meters high and one hundred meters wide; a 4 kilometer underground pipeline that crosses the town and a power house at the end that will house the two turbines of 2.3 MW each. The turbined water will be diverted through a collector ditch to the Nahueve River.
Dam in Nahueve: the arrival of the components for the generators has already been completed
"The electromechanical equipment has already been delivered and is safe on site," said López. The two generators that will be installed at the Nahueve hydroelectric plant were entirely manufactured abroad and shipped by sea in different shipments throughout 2023.
Given the particularities of the components and the manufacturing site, some were produced in Austria and others in India, so it was decided to organize shipment through staggered shipments.
Last May, the first components of the turbogroups were received at the site as part of the first of three shipments. Its dimensions did not exceed those allowed by road regulations, so its transfer from Valparaíso to Nahueve did not have any difficulties. These components are stored in warehouses of the Villa Nahueve Development Commission.
In the case of the second shipment, it included components of dimensions that did exceed them: these are the spiral chamber and the butterfly valve. For this reason, land transit from Austria to the port of Hamburg, where it was shipped, had delays. To deliver them to their destination, some modifications had to be made to the bridge that crosses the Nahueve River and links Route 44 with the power plant work. |
