Brazil’s federal energy authority ANEEL has approved a proposal by Brazilian Resources, a US-based resources development company in New Hampshire, to develop a hydro plant in Goias state. The 28MW Sao Domingos II project is located on the Sao Domingos river, a tributary of the Tocantins river approximately 400km north of Brasilia. The annual electric energy output of the plant is estimated at 200GWh with construction costs in the region of US$29.4M.
Other developments have recently taken place in Mato Grosso state, where IMPSA has delivered the third of four turbine/generator units for the 214.4MW Manso hydro power plant. The unit was put into commercial operation 91 days ahead of the contractual schedule.
Meanwhile, officials of Programa Estadual de Desestatizacao (PED) have established a minimum price of R$1.739B (US$1.5B) for the privatisation of 38.67% of Cesp Parana, a major power generating company in the Sao Paulo state. It is expected that the sell-off will take place in May 2001.
Cesp Parana has six hydroelectric power plants with a generating capacity of 6825 MW. Its total debts are currently estimated at R$7.38B (US$6.4B).
…Ecuador set to revive stalled Mazar project
President Gustavo Noboa of Ecuador has announced that he will revive the Mazar hydroelectric project, located in the southeastern part of the country. The project has been stalled since 1998 shortly after the Ecuadorian Electrification Institute (INECEL) went through the process of prequalifying interested developers for the project on a build, operate and transfer basis.
In addition to developing 766GWh of energy annually, the reservoir project was meant to optimise the capacity of downstream hydro projects on the Paute river, particularly that of the 1075MW Molino station which has experienced water shortages.
The civil works for Mazar include a 183m high concrete faced rockfill dam, spillways with a total capacity of 7500m3/sec, a diversion tunnel with a capacity of 1500m3/sec, and a 340m3/sec low level outlet. The underground power house will have a total installed capacity of 160MW with two 80MW vertical shaft Francis turbine units. The reservoir will store 410M m3 of water.
The Mazar power plant is to be linked to the national grid by a double 138kV line.