POWER STATION, Tauernmoos, Austria
The Tauernmoossee reservoir in the Hohe Tauern National Park has been used by ÖBB (Austrian Federal Railways) for power generation since 1929 together with the Enzingerboden power station and is now being modernised from the ground up. The new pumped storage power plant aims to utilise the existing Weißsee pre-storage reservoir as a storage basin for the flexible coverage of energy demand. SWIETELSKY tunnel construction is responsible for the implementation of this major project: more than ten kilometres of tunnels are being bored through the rock. The underground pressure tunnel between Weißsee and Tauernmoossee will be 1.6 kilometres in length, partly steel-armoured: eighty cubic metres of water per second will be carried to the actual heart of the system, a power plant hidden in a cavern. Completion is scheduled in 2025.