SIGNIFICANT progress has been made at the Bujagali hydro-power porject, two years since its inception.
An on-spot visit to the project site by The New Vision on Wednesday, showed that the power house that will consist of the control room and the five units where the turbines will be installed, is near completion.
Glenn Gaydar, the project director, said the basement was ready.
“We are now building a place for the electrical equipment. Mechanical work will start soon,” he added.
The $860m hydropower facility consists of a 28m high earth-filled dam, spillway works and associated power station, housing up to five 50MW turbines.
However, Gaydar said, the project had encountered geological problems, which forced the contractor to re-design the spill-way.
The spill-way is a structure used to provide for the controlled release of flows from a dam into a downstream area. Spill-ways release floods so the water does not overflow and damage the dam.
“When we started constructing the spill-way, we found the soils were very soft instead of the strong rocks that we had expected on the river bed,” he said.
“This could not allow us to continue with the old design because it could compromise the dam structure. The soil could be easily washed away by the speeding waters.”
It was difficult, Gaydar explained, to establish the type of the rock before construction started because the basement was covered by water.
The Bujagali dam spill-way is three meters high and 155 by 70 metres in width.
“This means we have to excavate the soft soil material and cover the huge area with thick concrete material to strengthen the spillway,” Gaydar said.
This additional work would not increase the cost of the project since it was covered in the project contingency fees, Gaydar said.
“We are now in negotiations with the various project stakeholders, including the lenders, the Government and the contractor to establish the cost and the date of commissioning the project.”
“Although we are still negotiating, work will continue. We have to meet our objective of delivering power on time,” he said.
Apart from the hydro-power project, an interconnection power transmission line from the Bujagali project to the national grid is also progressing well.
Civil work on the sub-station is also complete and it is only the electrical equipments and transformers that are yet to be installed.
When completed, Bujagali will help reduce the power deficit in the country and the reliance on the costly thermal generation.
