Pioneering spirit

Gugler Water Turbines GmbH is located in Goldwörth, near the city of Linz in the industrial centre of Austria, and is a family business with a long tradition.

The owners are the third generation of Gugler family involved in the development, design and manufacturing of water turbines and the operation of small hydropower plants. 

It all began in the small town of Freizell in Upper Austria in 1919 when, with much pioneering spirit, Rupert Gugler established a workshop and built a small hydropower plant in 1921 to provide electric energy to his workshop and to all 30 houses in the village where he lived.

Today Gugler Water Turbines supplies technologies for small and medium hydropower plants with a clear mission: to contribute to more efficient use of renewable energy sources, conservation of ecosystems and to the greater autonomy of decentralised energy suppliers.

Rupert Gugler

Production programme

Gugler supplies all types of water turbines up to 25MW per unit power output, as well as all required electromechanical and hydromechanical equipment for hydropower plants on a turn key basis - water to wire from one source. 

This includes gates, trash rake, trash rake cleaner for the intake, penstock and all equipment inside the power house including generators, control system, SCADA up to medium and high voltage switchgears/switchyards and transformers. Besides providing new hydropower projects with state-of-the-art technologies, the company also offers tailor-made solutions for modernisation and upgrading existing hydropower plants. It has developed special turbine applications for drinking and waste water treatment stations, for energy recovery system of thermal power plants and for irrigation systems. Syphon turbines, container turbines and gate turbines round off the company’s production program.

Recently Gugler has started to offer a pump storage system in combination with solar and wind power plants, so called hybrid systems for off-grid solutions. Hereby excess power generator by solar and wind power plants is used to pump water from a lower to an upper reservoir and use that water in a turbine to produce electric energy whenever needed in peak hours or during night hours.

At the heart of every modern hydropower plant is a high-performance automatic control system. Process visualisation, monitoring, and remote control systems makes it possible to manage, monitor and troubleshoot the power station using a fixed, mobile or internet connection from home or when on the go. As a result, longer downtimes and loss of production can be effectively avoided in combination with the support of a predictive maintenance programme.

 Rekovici hydropower plant, Serbia

Project highlights

The Gugler family has been active in the hydropower sector for 100 years and has gained extensive experience from the supply of around 1000 turbines. It maintains a subsidiary in Istanbul, Turkey and serves customers in cooperation with around 50 representatives in Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America.

Recent project highlights include: 

• In Europe – Three horizontal Kaplan Pit type turbines with a runner diameter of 2.85m are being supplied for Rekovici hydropower plant in Serbia with an installed capacity of 8MW. 
• In Central America – The new hydropower plant Pencaligue in Honduras with an installed power output of 18MW was equipped with three horizontal, two-jet, Pelton turbines and complete electromechanical equipment.
• In Asia – In June 2019 Gugler successfully put two vertical Pelton turbines with six nozzles into operation at the 20MW Bineng hydropower plant in the Philippines for the Aboitiz/Hedcor group. 
• In Africa – Gugler completed its fifth hydropower project in Rwanda, supplying two Francis turbines for the 2.8MW Rwaza 1 hydropower project. 

The 18MW Pencaligue plant in Honduras

Rwaza 1 project in Rwanda