High up in the Andes, at an altitude of 1,430 m, HOCHTIEF is building a turnkey run-of-river power plant. Around 220 kilometers south-east of Santiago de Chile, the Tinguiririca, Azufre and Portillo rivers will generate 160 MW of electricity.

To deliver this, HOCHTIEF is building an above-ground power plant and blasting tunnels, totaling 21 kilometers in length. Two horizontal tunnels channel the river water and rainwater collected above-ground to a pressure shaft around 360 meters long, driven vertically into the ground. This shaft is large enough to accommodate the entire height of the Eiffel Tower. From there, the water flows through a high-pressure tunnel to the turbines.

The watershed of the new power plant, a daily storage unit, has a volumetric capacity of 1.2 million ³ of water. HOCHTIEF is also responsible for planning the entire system, including the M&E part. The construction process includes the approach roads, all the concrete work for the catchment system, the tunnels, the turbines/generators, all building services, the steel construction for hydraulic engineering for the isolated water catchment vessels and connecting the system to the grid using a high-voltage power line. The new hydroelectric power plant will cut annual CO₂ emissions in Chile by more than 400,000 tons. The project will be complete in summer 2010.

The specialists at HOCHTIEF Construction have not only shortened the construction period by optimizing the planning process, but have also vastly improved the amount of energy which can be used annually.