Finnish Poyry Gets 2.0 Mln Euro Deal in Albania's Ashta Hydro Project

"The detail construction design includes the guideline drawings for the weir, powerhouses, headrace and tailrace channel and all appurtenant structures, as well as the execution design for the civil construction works," Poyry has said in a statement on its website.

The detail design services shall be delivered by April 2012.

The Ashta project calls for the construction of a 48-megawatt hydropower plant, an investment worth 160 million euro, on the river Drin in northern Albania. The power plant is planned to start operations in 2012. It is built by Austria's Verbund through its Albanian subsidiary Energji Ashta.

Austrian machine building company Andritz will supply 45 turbine generator units worth approximately 100 million euro for the power plant.

Albania's hydropower plants, most of them built on the Drin river, have a combined installed capacity of 1,670 MW. The Balkan country, which relies almost entirely on its water resources to generate electricity and meet domestic energy demand, produced 2,993 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity in the first half of 2009, 50% up from a year earlier. Also in 2009, thanks to abundant snow- and rainfall, Albania made its first ever electricity exports, selling a total of 797 GWh of electricity abroad through June, mainly to Greece.

Poyry (www.poyry.com) offers in-depth industry expertise, innovative solutions and lifecycle engagement in the hydropower, oil and gas, power and heat, renewable energy, pulp and paper industry, chemical process industry, transportation, water and environment, and construction services. The company has about 7,000 experts in 49 countries.

($ = 0.664 euro)