Wärtsilä, a Finland-based specialist in flexible power plants, has signed a contract worth €75M to supply a 101MW plant to Pampa Energía in Argentina.
General Electric (GE) has won a turnkey contract worth over $900M from Centrais Elétricas de Sergipe (CELSE) for a combined-cycle power plant in Brazil.
Enel renewable energy subsidiary Enel Green Power Brasil Participações (EGPB) has begun construction on the Morro do Chapéu Sul wind farm cluster in Bahia, Brazil.
Enel’s subsidiary Enel Green Power Brasil Participações (EGPB) has begun construction of the Horizonte solar plant in Brazil.
A consortium formed by Morelco, a subsidiary of Peruvian construction firm Graña y Montero, has won a $149M contract to deliver the Regional Transmission System located in the Colombian Atlantic Coast.The contract has been awarded by the Mining and Energy Planning Unit (UPME) — an entity of the Ministry of Mines and Energy responsible for the design, supplies procurement, construction, operation and maintenance of the electrical reinforcement of Guajira Province.
KfW IPEX-Bank and Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen (Helaba) have agreed to provide a $160M loan for the construction of the Peralta wind farm in Uruguay.The wind farm — located in the municipality of Cuchilla de Peralta in the department of Tacuarembó in central Uruguay — is being built by German wind turbine manufacturer Enercon and will have a total installed capacity of 117.5MW.Peralta will feature 50 Enercon E-92 wind turbines including a hub height of 108m, a rotor diameter of 92m and an output of 2,350kW per turbine. It will produce enough energy to supply around 150,000 Uruguayan households.The power produced in the facility will be sold to the national energy supplier Administración Nacional de Usinas y Trasmisiones Eléctricas (UTE), which signed a power purchase agreement for a period of 20 years. KfW IPEX-Bank management board member Markus Scheer said: “German and European wind technology is in demand internationally. This is a great opportunity — both for manufacturers and the environment. As a bank, we do our part in helping ideas and projects take concrete shape.”
Tecna, a subsidiary of Isolux Corsan, has secured an EPC contract from Argentina’s Comision Nacional de Energia Atómica (CNEA) for the balance of plant of the CAREM 25 nuclear power plant project in Argentina.
Wind and solar energy firm Mainstream Renewable Power has secured contracts from the National Energy Commission of Chile to build and operate seven wind energy plants, worth a total of $1.65bn.
With a burgeoning market for hydropower development, tunnelling work is seeing an uptick in South America’s third largest country. Nicole Robinson looks at two recent projects.The World Bank released a report in 2010 to help the Peruvian government in assessing the potential role of hydropower in the energy sector and the measures that could be taken to encourage its continued development as appropriate. Hydropower has been the major source of electricity in Peru, traditionally supplying more than 80% of requirements, and serving as a source of independent generation for major mines and industries.However, as the report explains, in the early 1990s efforts turned to natural gas and the government began providing incentives for its use in power generation: "This resulted in a virtual moratorium on hydropower development as a result of the very low price of natural gas (below economic cost)."Over the next decade, with the development of export markets for gas and increased attention to the impacts of climate change, the Government returned its attention to hydropower. The Peruvian government completed its National Energy Plan 2014-2025, which calls for electricity to comprise 60% renewable sources by 2025, with 54% coming from hydropower.The International Hydropower Association called Peru a regional leader in small hydropower projects. In its 2015 Hydropower Status report it estimates Peru has hydropower potential of at least 70GW, "of which only 3.8GW have been tapped so far."In 2014 Peru added 199MW, ranking it among the top 20 countries installing capacity at number 17 —Canada comes in at number three and the US at number 16.The market potential for hydro construction in Peru has captivated the likes of Odebrecht, whose subsidiary Empresa de Generación Huallaga (EGH) is developing the 462MW Chaglla power plant, which will be country's third biggest hydropower project upon opening, scheduled for this year.Norwegian company Statkraft opened its ninth hydropower plant in Peru, the Cheves Hydropower Project, this autumn. "The opening of Cheves consolidates Statkraft's position among the largest power producers in Peru," says Statkraft's executive vice president of International Hydropower, Asbjørn Grundt. "It also underlines our ambition to further strengthen our position as a leading international provider of pure energy. Our efforts in South-America play a very important role in this strategy,"Chaglla’s bypassLocated between the districts of Chaglla and Chinchao, some 420m from Lima, the Chaglla Hydroelectric Power Plant has 406MW of installed capacity. The plant is the result of an investment made by Odebrecht Energia of $1.bn, with support from the Brazilian Development Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank, among others.The project will also feature a small power house, including a power transformer with an output of 6MW. "Chaglla will be one of the largest hydroelectrical power plants in Peru and it will represent almost 8% of the current consumption of energy of this country," says Erlon Arfelli, manager of Odebrecht Energia in Peru.Construction started in May 2011, with Sandvik supplying six DT820-SC tunnelling jumbos for the excavation at Chaglla. Underground construction includes a spillway composed of three tunnels for a total length of 2,838m, 14.5m x 12.6m-high. The 14.7.km-long intake tunnel is horseshoe-shaped with a 7.6m diameter.One of the most important works in the project is bypassing the Huallaga River, which contractors performed through a trunk tunnel of 12.5m diameter, 1,125m long. Odebrecht says the work concluded nine months prior to the scheduled date. The bypass tunnel, a significant step for the project, allowing the dam to be constructed in the former riverbed.Odebrecht says EGH began filling the reservoir on September 1, 2015, and expects the process to last between 45 and 60 days. The project's lenders appointed Mott MacDonald in 2013 as independent engineer to monitor construction.
POSCO E&C has started construction on a 380MW combined cycle power (CCPP) plant in Colon, Panama.The project will include the construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) CCPP plant, along with an 180,000cb m LNG storage tank to supply fuel at Colon — located near the Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal — entailing an investment of $650M.The facility, set to be the largest of its kind in Panama, will generate enough electricity to power about 300,000 homes.Upon completion, the power plant will provide a stable supply of electricity to the industrial complex near Panama Canal and the Colon area.POSCO E&C CEO Han Chan-kun said: "The project is the result of efforts to establish trust with the ordering parties in Latin America over the past decade."It will be a great chance for us to showcase the high-quality construction technology of E&C across the world."The power plant will be completed in July 2018 and the LNG tank in May 2019.
Spanish-based company Acciona Agua has completed construction and announced the opening of the wastewater treatment plant and underwater outlet of La Chira in Lima, Peru.The €97M project will treat the wastewater of about 3M people, representing around one-third of the population of Peru’s capital city.The plant features an advanced system to neutralise bad odours through biological bacterial treatment, reducing the atmospheric pollution created by the traditional use of chemicals in this kind of process. The plant is to be operated under a 25-year concession by a joint venture led by Acciona Agua and Graña y Montero.
Mainstream Renewable Power has received an approval from the Service of Environmental Assessment for its 264MW Cerro Tigre wind farm in Chile.Located close to the town of Antofagasta in north Chile, the $630M project will include 80 wind turbines in an area of 1,131ha and will be connected to the northern grid. Mainstream Renewable Power Chile’s CEO Bart Doyle said: “This work will contribute to the development of a diversified, clean and reliable energy mix which will provide an efficient solution to the country and the people of this region.“We are a company that develops its own projects and we are always looking for new opportunities for solar and wind energy developments, and the region of Antofagasta has important attributes that enable this.”The company will also commence construction of two wind farms in Chile: the Sarco wind farm which is located in Atacama, and the Aurora wind farm, located in the region of Los Lagos.With a combined generation capacity of 300MW, the two wind farms will provide power to the Central Interconnected System.
Enel Green Power Brasil Participações (EGPB) has begun construction on Cristalândia wind farm in Bahia, Brazil.Located in the municipalities of Brumado, Rio de Contas and Dom Basilio, the $190m project will have a total installed capacity of 90MW, and is expected to commence operations in the second half of 2017. Upon completion, the wind farm will produce over 350GWh annually, which is enough to power more than 170,000 Brazilian households. It will also reduce carbon emissions by about 118,000 tonnes.The wind farm has been awarded to EGPB, a subsidiary of Enel, through the Leilão de Fontes Alternativas (LFA) — a public renewable energy auction — in April 2015.
Enel Group subsidiary Enel Green Power Brasil Participações (EGPB) has begun construction of the Lapa solar park, which is expected to cost about $175m.The company secured the Lapa solar park project, together with Horizonte MP (103MW) and Nova Olinda (292MW), during the Leilão de Reserva public tender in August 2015.The 158MW solar park is being built on a site located at Bom Jesus da Lapa in Brazil's north-eastern state of Bahia. It will comprise two facilities – the 80MW Bom Jesus da Lapa and the 78MW Lapa.When functional, the solar park will generate close to 340GWh per year, sufficient to power more than 166,000 Brazilian households annually and prevent about 198,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from emanating into the atmosphere.The project will be supported by 20-year supply contracts that will allow sale of specified volumes of energy generated by the plants to the Brazilian Chamber of Commercialisation of Electric Energy (Câmara de Comercialização da Energia Elétrica or CCEE).The solar park is scheduled to become operational in the second half of 2017.
Isolux Corsan has completed construction work on the $100m solar photovoltaic power plant Aura II in the Choluteca region of Honduras.
South Korean firm POSCO E&C has secured a $650m EPC turn-key contract from Gas Natural Atlantico and Costa Norte LNG Terminal for the Colon combined cycle power plant and LNG terminal project in Panama.