Page 20 - FCC-N10-eng

FCC has been appointed to lead the “Eff-
ciency Through Energy Capture Control”
(ECOE) project together with the company
URBICSA (the concession holder of the
Barcelona and Hospitalet ‘City of Justice’)
and the Catalonia Institute for Energy Re-
search (IREC), the Catalan reference point
in the research and development of tech-
nologies related with energy saving and eff-
ciency and renewable energies.
The project, fnanced by the Spanish Minis-
try for Science and Innovation (MICINN), is
FCC to coordinate the
ECOE building-energy
research program
aimed at rolling out and testing a new buil-
ding-energy management system and me-
thodology that minimises wiring and con-
sumption requirements by interconnecting
the lighting and climate-control networks
using energy harvesting, with minimal wi-
ring requirements.
In this regard the solution will be fexible and
adaptable to new-build and restored buil-
dings, minimizing costs and ROI time.
The project has a budget of €1.28M and
will run for nearly three years. ECOE will in-
volve the generation of a series of important
innovations including the roll-out and imple-
mentation of energy-harvesting systems;
secure routing protocols for sensor networ-
ks; lighting and climate-control systems,
and the development of new comfort indi-
cators for integral energy-demand mana-
An FCC article
gets the
Leonardo Award
The panel of judges of the Leonardo Award,
a distinction given by the INTIC (Innovation
and New Technologies in Civil Engineering)
Network in cooperation with Revista de
Obras Públicas, has decided unanimously
to confer its prize for 2010 to the article
entitled, “Construcción de presas en el ex-
terior. Periodo entre Congresos Barcelona
2006 y Brasilia 2009” (“Dam Construction
Abroad. Period Between 2006 Barcelona
Conferences and Brasilia 2009”). The arti-
cle is a joint effort written by civil engineer
Víctor Flórez Casillas, who is the manager
of the Hydraulic Works and Marine Cons-
truction Department of FCC Construcción,
Antonio Capote of Ferrovial and Fernando
Abadía from Dragados, and it was publis-
hed in the “Civil Engineering Science and
Technology” section of Revista de Obras
Públicas.
The award-winning article describes the
main features of three dams already built
or in the process of being built by Spa-
nish frms abroad. One of them is the dam
built by FCC subsidiary Alpine in Tsankov
Kamak, Bulgaria. This is a dome dam that
stands 130.5 metres tall, measured from
its foundations. It has a maximum width of
27.6 metres at its base and 8.8 metres at
its crown.
The site lies 250 kilometres southwest of
Sofa, near Smolyan, in the Rhodope mas-
sif on the border with Greece, on the Vacha
River, and it belongs to the Dospat-Vacha
Cascade.
With the construction of this dam, the
hydroelectric system’s generating capaci-
ty has been boosted by 48% (188 GWh/
year) to 570 GWh/year. The Tsankov Ka-
mak hydroelectric power plant will generate
85 MW with a useful head of around 137
metres.
The panel judging the frst Leonardo Award
highlighted the great effort Spanish cons-
truction frms are putting into exporting and
innovation.
gement. The project will also include a pilot
test to be run in one of the Barcelona and
Hospitalet ‘City of Justice’ offce buildings.
Teresa de Ugarte, the head of FCC Energy in
Cataluña and Aragon.