Builders have made up for the delay caused by floods. The Štětí Small Hydroelectric Plant is structurally complete.

Metrostav’s builders structurally completed the small hydroelectric plant in Štětí, in the region of Litoměřice, at the beginning of November, successfully making up for the delay caused by July floods. Owing to their team working and great commitment, technologists were immediately allowed to come to the site on the right bank of the River Labe and start to install the turbines. The Štětí Small Hydroelectric Plant will be an exceptional environmentally friendly structure, which will provide both power from the renewable source and finances for charitable purposes. „We have extensive experience in constructing small hydroelectric plants. Only on the River Labe have we recently built six. The majority of them have been completed but the Štětí plant is unique in that it is solely our turn-key contract. In practice, this means that we provide the complete project realisation, from the first dig into the ground up to the power plant commissioning. At the moment we are starting to assemble two three-blade turbines, owing to which the power plant should reach the output of 6MW,” says Jiří Škranc, project manager from Metrostav Division 6. „We will finance non-profit activities from the power plant operation profit, for example children’s hospice care, in the partnership with Klíček Foundation. In this way the River Labe power will become useful twice. It will produce environmentally clean energy and will contribute to a good cause,” says Marek Černocký from Energeia public benefit company, the project owner and future operator of the power plant. The Štětí plant is a significant environmentally friendly project. It is not only because of the fact that it will produce energy from a renewable source. Builders build it also for aquatic animals, not only for people. It comprises structures which will contribute to the preservation of life in the river and the maximisation of biodiversity. „It is necessary for weirs not preventing fish from natural migration to build the so-called fish ladders on them. We reconstructed the old ladder and adapted it to allow the passage even of salmon-fish. In addition, we built a new fish pass in the right-hand part of the raft gate and subsequently we will cover it with big boulders,“ says Škranc. Apart from this pass, an animals repelling facility will be installed at the beginning of the intake canal, which is intended to minimise the entry of animals to the intake structure. In June 2013, the construction site experienced dramatic moments when floods swept through the entire Bohemian region. The construction site had to be inundated in a controlled way to prevent damage to the construction pit. The raging of the elements therefore did not lead to a collapse and the only consequence was a one-month long delay of the works. Thanks to night shifts and the use of faster hardening concrete the delay was made up for and the works today proceed again in accordance with the original schedule. The Štětí Small Hydroelectric Plant should be commissioned in the summer of 2014, to be handed over to the client in February 2015. It is expected that the power plant will annually generate 30 GWh on average, which will be sufficient for supplying households in a town with the population of 22,000.