HOBAS Pressure Pipes Ensure Filisur Power Plant Operation for Almost 50 years, CH

Nov. 20, 2012 - PRLog -- The first GRP pipes by the dye works “Basler Stückfärberei AG”, from which the company HOBAS evolved, were produced in Basel, Switzerland, in the 1950s. The founding fathers already suspected that their product was something very special. Rightly so, HOBAS can today look back on more than half a century of successful company history. One of the first clients that utilized HOBAS Pipes as penstock for a hydropower plant was the Swiss power company Albula Landwasser Kraftwerke AG.

The corporation was founded in 1961 and today runs hydropower plants in numerous valleys in the canton Grisons, in the east of the country. One of these is the power plant Filisur where, in 1965, 480 meters GRP pressure pipes 1250 mm in diameter were installed as penstock. Making use of the natural incline, water from Tuor creek 1423 m above sea level is first conveyed through a sand trap and then transported through a GRP pipe to the hydropower gallery Bergün/Filisur. Turbines subsequently transform the generated water power into electric energy.

The first 245-meter-long section of the pipeline was installed in open trench along a road with 2.4 meters cover. On the second section of  235 meters the pipes were encased with 20 cm of reinforced concrete and installed beneath the road. Basler Stückfärberei conducted all assembly works themselves. A challenge in this project was the difficult accessibility of the terrain. Bends were utilized to optimally adapt the pipeline route to the terrain. Thanks to the comparatively light weight of GRP, the pipes could be transported with ordinary cross-country vehicles and without special equipment. Construction works progressed quickly and were finalized within the months May to July despite strongly varying temperatures between 5 and 30° C.

Today, almost half a century later, the hydropower plant Filisur is still in operation. Together with the plant Tiefencastel it produces around 381 million kWh which approximates 5 % of the annually produced electricity in Grisons. Over the years, the GRP pipes have been regularly inspected and have been reliably doing their job ever since the plant’s startup.

The company HOBAS evolved from the Basel dye works and developed into the worldwide leading supplier of GRP pipe systems for applications such as potable water supply, sewage discharge, drainage, irrigation, hydropower pipelines and pipe systems for industrial plants. HOBAS Pipes have been successfully installed in more than 50 countries around the world – aligned they would span the world several times.

Convince yourself of the quality of HOBAS Pipes and find out about the secret of their longevity by watching the video below: http://youtu.be/fZqKPsq56C8



Fmd: http://www.hobas.com/