Sarens builds power plant in Greece

Athens, Greece-headquartered construction company Terna S.A. and Belgian-headquartered international heavy lift and transportation specialist Sarens worked together for three years on the construction of a 660 MW power plant in Ptolemaida, Greece.

During that time Sarens and Terna carried out more than 100 lift and tackle arrangements, installing around 20,000 tonnes of new elements. The largest crane Sarens had on site was a Demag CC 8800-1 crawler crane, with a  capacity of 1,600 tonnes.

It also had two Liebherr LR 1750 lattice boom crawler cranes, each with a capacity of 750 tonnes. And it had one Demag CC 2400 lattice boom crawler crane, which is in the 400 tonne capacity class.

The new power plant was being constructed inside an old coal mine pit in the mountains of Greece. As the plant construction progressed, the available space became more limited and cranes had to lift higher and further to continue installing new elements.

The configuration of the cranes was changed multiple times to adapt to these new circumstances. In that time, multiple tailing operations and tandem lifts were executed, explained Sarens, and one of the LR 1750s was assembled inside the cooling tower.

The CC 8800-1 remained on site for a few months, for the installation of a flue gas duct. The LR 1750s remained on site for three years, and were used for a range of lifts, including ducts, steelwork, and equipment. The CC 2400-1 remained on site for a year-and-a-half. A lifting supervisor guided the crane operators while a site manager oversaw organisational matters.

“I enjoyed working together with the client in close collaboration,” said Sarens project engineer Wim de Keersmaecker, who was involved with the whole project for almost four years.

“We advised and assisted the client in considering different solutions, mostly from headquarters but also sometimes from the site. There were some more technically challenging lifts, like lifting the clean gas ducts inside the cooling tower, flue gas duct on the outside of the boiler house with Sarspin, or tandem lifting vertical ducts into the boiler house.”

The three-year job was completed in June 2020.