Kveaså power plant

The Kveaså power plant is located in Valle municipality in Aust-Agder county.

The history of Kveaså
The Kveaså river is a tributary of the Otra river. The river is located on the east side of Setesdalen and comes down midway between Rysstad and Valle in Valle municipality. Kveaså begins at a height of approx. 1200 metres at the watershed towards Fyresdal. The rainfall field thus covers parts of the eastern Setesdal hills and contains several larger bodies of water, the Ljomsvann lake, Asslandsvatnet lake and Rossevatnet lake. From the top, the river runs narrowly through the valley and ends its journey precipitously down towards Otra. There was once a path along Kveaså to the cabins on the hills. Today, people use the road that passes Bjørgum to get here. The old postal road from 1844 goes past the river, and you can still see the remains of this today. In earlier times, power from Kveaså was used to run the mill house, to the benefit of the surrounding farms.

The project
After a lengthy assessment, the landowners decided in April 2004 to collaborate with Småkraft on the development of Kveaså to produce clean energy. The project was granted a licence from NVE in 2007. After a lengthy period of work, the physical construction work began in February 2010 and was completed in December 2011.

Kveaså power plant has a station building in the mountains to ensure that it is clear of landslide-prone areas. The end of the tunnel has been used to house the technical installations of the power station. This minimised the excavation of land mass and also provided a technically and aesthetically good solution. Collaboration between landowners, suppliers and Småkraft has been good, and any issues during the construction project were resolved well.

The Pelton turbine has 5 nozzles with a maximum flow rate of 1.7 m3/s, and it runs a 5490 kVA, 6600 V generator. All power is converted up to 22 kV and delivered to the grid. The intake dam was built as a gravity dam in reinforced concrete with a channel for grating and a sliding hatch. The waterway partly consists of buried pipes with a diameter of 0.8 meters, and the lower part of the route was constructed as a shaft with an associated tunnel down to the power station. The power station is built into the mountain.

Technical data

Rainfall field

18.5 km²

Minimum water flow

Summer: 110 l/s

Intake elevation

652 m

Power station elevation

282,0 m

Drop height

370 m

Production

12.8 GWh
This corresponds to electricity 800 households.