President Duque says he does not press the inauguration of Hidroituango, but he does ask to respect the schedule

In the last month there has been speculation about the date on which the first turbine of the Hidroituango hydroelectric plant will come into operation. Among the rumors, there is that, supposedly, the national government is pressuring the workers to have this part of the work delivered before the end of President Iván Duque's administration. This was denied by the president himself, who on March 17 assured that the only interest there is is to respect the schedules.

It should be noted that, with regard to the progress of the work, the Public Companies of Medellín (EPM) recently accepted that there are delays. Engineer William Giraldo Jiménez, Vice President of Power Generation Projects at EPM, said that the company has had significant staff to do the work, but this has not been enough. He emphasizes that to date it reports an increase of more than 87%, but he has difficulties.

“Where we lack a road, where there are so many things at stake, 80 contractors around what is being done, but we are playing so that we can have that date. Obviously we can move a few days depending on what happens in these coming months,” said the senior official.

While it is true that an 87% advance is quite a lot, fixing the reported problems could take longer than imagined. The first turbine should receive up to 270 cubic meters of water per second to generate up to 300 megawatts. However, the consortium assures that water tests will not take place until October, more than two months after the agreed date.

The workers at the construction site report that they have had difficulty completing the shielding of the vertical wells, since "it has not advanced at the required speed in the lower elbows.” However, it is expected that, in the installation of the metal shielding of the straight part of these wells, a reduction in times will be achieved.

Despite the problems, EPM maintains that it is optimistic and hopes that the work will be able to start working within the agreed time. While the date arrives, the company assures that it will report progress to determine whether they are able to meet within the initial deadline.

On the other hand, it should be remembered that EPM will open a new tender to define the group that will be responsible for completing the works of the Hidroituango Hydroelectric Plant. In this regard, President Duque took advantage of his speech to ask that this process does not cause delays in the construction of the remaining six turbines.

Hopefully these contractor changes are not to justify lawsuits, fights or discrepancies, because, if so, what is going to be put into play will be delays in the six turbines that must be installed. I hope that good sense continues to prevail,” said Duque.

It should be remembered that the CCC Ituango consortium, which is responsible only for civil works and the first phase of the project, signed an extension of the contract for the construction of the hydroelectric plant in December last year. This agreement envisaged extending the work of the commissioned firm until the end of August of this year. At this time, the concrete structure of the first and second turbines must be completed.

It is expected that before the end of August the contractor to finish Hidroituango will have already been defined.

KEEP READING: