VERBUND Inn Power Plant at Gars: The Core Piece has Arrived!

The abnormal load transporting the approx. 30-tonne turbine required more than seven hours for the 250-kilometre journey from the Andritz plant in Ravensburg through to Gars am Inn. Also spectacular was the work of the 200-tonne mobile crane, which hoisted the turbine component from the truck into the newly constructed building. The delivered components (shaft, wheel) will be installed in the coming weeks; the engine test run is scheduled to take place from March 2013.

A particular challenge was posed by the delivery of the turbine components from Ravensburg in the southwest of Germany. It was necessary to pass through numerous level crossings, and real feats had to be performed in the haulage of the 19-metre-long truck-trailer along the narrow access road to the Inn power plant of Gars. "It all went smoothly; the transporters worked very professionally," said VERBUND project manager Franz Mandl.

The delivered turbine components are the core of a hydropower plant site, and their installation represents the most important milestone of the construction project. "Andritz lifted the 12-tonne rotor, with its diameter of 3.65 metres, into the structure along with the 16-tonne turbine shaft," said Mandl. "The lifting, assembly and fine tuning require precision work that was carried out competently and trouble-free by our partners."

More electricity from domestic hydropower in Bavaria

For VERBUND, the increase in efficiency and reactivation of existing plants and measured expansion are important building blocks towards the environmentally friendly utilisation of the domestic renewable resource of hydropower.

An additional engine is currently being installed at the existing power plant of Gars am Inn in order to generate more electricity in an environmentally friendly way in the future. With the new construction of the Gars engine, VERBUND is expanding the power plant group and therewith investing in the development of Bavarian hydropower. As early as 2004 and 2009, two plants in line with the Renewable Energies Resources Act, each with a capacity of 5 megawatts, began operations at the sites of Jettenbach and Wasserburg. Together, all three machine units are supplying electricity for some 25,000 Bavarian households.

These expansions carried out by VERBUND are in keeping with the current study by Thomas Hamacher of the Technical University of Munich on Bavarian electricity supply in 2022: an additional 14 percent hydropower production is possible. In their investigations, the team of energy scientists working with Hamacher came to the conclusion that the development of production capacities - such as water, wind, photovoltaics and biomass - is urgently necessary and that, by 2022, it would be possible for more than 40 % of the electricity produced in Bavaria to originate from renewable energy sources. 

Project data "Gars Engine"

Location	right-hand river bank next to existing weir
Maximum flow rate	100 m3/s
Mean gross head	7.20 m
Capacity	5 megawatt (MW)
Additional generation per year	13.7 million kilowatt hours (kWh)
Turbinen type	Kaplan turbine with a 3.65 m diameter
Investment volume	approx € 20 million