Power Plant for Guatemala
Joint venture consisting of BLUE WATER SHIPPING, Esbjerg / Denmark ++ DACO HEAVY LIFT TRANSPORT S.A. / Guatemala, DACOTRANS DE CENTROAMERICA / Guatemala and DAKO WORLDWIDE TRANSPORT GMBH, Düsseldorf / Germany ++ We terminated the transport of a complete diesel generating power plant originating from various countries in Europe, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France and Indonesia to Chimaltenango in Guatemala.
The heart of the plant consisted of two diesel engines which originally have a weight of 320 tons each, but of which the base frame and the turbo charger were dismantled. So the final transport weight of each engine was 258 tons.
The town of Chimaltenango is situated in the Guatemalan highlands at a height of approx. 1.700 m. In order to reach Chimaltenango the transport had to get over a mountain pass at over 2.000 m height. The road climbing to this pass had a slope of up to 17.5 %. Even though DACO HEAVY LIFT S.A. disposes of excellent Mercedes Titan Prime Movers, 8 x 6 and 6 x 6, it turned out in the preparational works that a self-propelled trailer with the respective power pack had to be added to the conventional hydraulic GOLDHOFER trailers of DACO HEAVY LIFT S.A. So we arranged for an agreement with MARINO CRANES of New Jersey and DACOTRANS DE GUATEMALA for importing a 6 axle self-propelled trailer on temporary basis in order to guarantee a safe transport of this valuable cargo to Chimaltenango.
Shipping from Europe was organized within the consortium by BLUE WATER up to Puerto Quetzal, the Guatemalan main port at the Pacific Coast, and the discharge was carried out with ship’s gear onto DACO HEAVY LIFT’s trailer. After customs clearance and weighing of the cargo the transport started on conventional basis and due to broken bridges (result of the last hurricane) slopes of up to 9 % had to be managed on various detours. In addition we used the DACO HEAVY LIFT own overbridge on many smaller bridges and in other cases bridges had to be reinforced in order to arrange for a safe passage.
6 axles from the 18 axle trailer at the end of the trailer were substituted by the self-propelled GOLDHOFER trailer at Amatitlan at a height of approx. 1.300 m above sea level. From there the convoy tracked the pass at Barcenas / Santa Lucía Milpas Altas with prime movers in front and a total of 18 axles of which 6 were self-propelled at the end. The whole transport went very slow but without any problems up to the mountains.
The whole operation was technically assisted by the respective specialists of GOLDHOFER AG, Memmingen.
Finally reaching the Carretera Panamericana one pedestrian bridge had to be dismantled and another one was temporarily lifted by hydraulic systems. The transport of the two diesel engines reached safely the construction site. DACO HEAVY LIFT did also the re-erection, fitting the base frames under the engines, and mounting the turbo charger on top. Finally the DACO HEAVY LIFT specialists took care of jacking and sliding the engines with a weight of 320 tons and the generators with unit weights of 70 tons into their final place inside the power house.
The job was concluded to the entire satisfaction of the client in April 2008.
