Production was halted in mid-March last year due to a damaged section of the 300-meter-long pipeline leading water into the power station. The damage was discovered during a routine inspection.

Several possible solutions were evaluated. Hydro decided to create a new shaft and tunnel instead of repairing the damaged pipeline. With this concept water is led through a vertical shaft and tunnel before it goes into a new steel pipeline into the power station.

It’s been hectic for several months at the site in Nesflaten in the Suldal municipality in the county of Rogaland. The challenging work, based on ambitious plans, has been carried out in a safe way. Construction workers from BIS, Skanska and Hydro have been racking up more than 50,000 hours of work since the project began.

The Suldal 1 power station has an annual production capacity of about 1 TWh, equivalent to the consumption of 50,000 average Norwegian households.