The small hydropower plant at our Galičnik site in North Macedonia was granted its operating licence on October 21, 2014, just two years after construction commencement. With the power purchase agreement now in force, the facility has been feeding renewable electricity into the grid on the basis of the “Privileged Producer” tariff, supplying around 1,000 households with environmentally friendly electricity. The power plant has been hooked up to the electricity network since it began operational trials in May 2014. The construction conditions for this project were significantly more difficult than originally envisaged, particularly with respect to a steep 500 metre section of the penstock. During the spring of 2014, we built a number of concrete support walls at another incline in order to be able to better protect a section of the penstock against erosion. Extreme slope angles of up to about 60° and jagged, avalanche-prone rock formations, together with general difficulties in gaining access to the terrain for heavy-duty machinery, made the construction work exceptionally complex. However, thanks to our joint efforts with a local construction company, we were still able to make satisfactory progress.
