The proposed San Pedro hydro scheme in Chile has been submitted for assessment, according to the country's environmental regulator Conama, and the Rio Cuervo scheme is to be re-submitted.
San Pedro is a run-of-river scheme being developed by local generation company Colbun with a budget of US$180M. The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been submitted to Conama.
The project is intended to take three years to be built and commissioned, sited in the district of Panguipulli and Los Lagos. Colbun intends that the scheme will generate an average of about 960GWh per year.
Colbun has 10 hydro plants, the largest of which are the 478MW Colbun, the 178MW Rucue and the 172MW Canutillar.
Energia Austral, a Chilean generation subsidiary of Swiss-based mining group Xstrata, plans to resubmit its plans for the 600MW Rio Cuervo hydro project to the regional environmental regular Corema.
The EIA was submitted to Corema in January after a draft being reviewed by an international consultant, the company said. However, Corema said there was insufficient information and the EIA was not cleared. The company is reviewing the feedback to help it re-submit the EIA.
The project is planned to have firm power of 446MW to generate an average of 3900GWh per year. Cost of the project is budgeted at about US$600M.
Energia Austral wants to sell the electricity to the grid as demand in the country is growing at almost 7% per year, it said, adding that about 500MW of additional generation capacity will be required by 2011.