BEFESA

Befesa awarded works to improve the dam in O Con, Pontevedra (Spain)

The public company responsible for water projects and services of the regional government of Galicia has awarded Befesa, in a joint venture with Puentes y Calzadas, the contract to improve and automate the dam in O Con, Pontevedra (north west Spain), which is the main source of drinking water for the local municipality of Vilagarcía de Arousa and other villages nearby.

The purpose of the works is to improve the security of the dam and its operations, automating the monitoring and the outflow systems. The key data on the structural performance of the dam will be automatically processed, as well as controlling variables that at present are unrecorded.

The automation of the monitoring process will be carried out by using sensors that control the level of the reservoir, filter sensors, piezometric sensors, sensors for the outflow system and for seismicity. The automated parameters will be sent to the control centre of the Xunta de Galicia, the regional government, which centralises all the data on the dams that it manages.

In addition to an emergency power generator, five automatic gates will be installed on the spillway in order to increase the reservoir’s capacity.

Befesa Agua is a leader in the Spanish market for implementing and developing water data systems, dam control and automation, and models that support water management decision making. The company currently manages, operates and maintains the automatic hydrological data systems for four water systems in Spain: Guadalquivir, Guadalete-Barbate, the Andalusian Mediterranean basin and the Duero.