HYDROELECTRIC PLANT-PLATFORM: BETTER COST-EFFECTIVE!? OR UTOPIA!?

Reproduced from: http://www.cerpch.unifei.edu.br/arquivos/revistas/60/hidro-hydro-60-pag-28a30.pdf

When the country began to speak about the implantation of the concept of the plant platform with less impact on the environment, the prediction was to hold the first auction in 2011, with the hydroelectric plant São Luiz Tapajos, with 6,133 MW, with operation beginning in 2016. Three years later and a se- ries of environmental barriers, delays and legal feasibility studies dwindled the hydroelectric participation in recent auctions, the government begins to discuss a bid for a mega-plant located in the Tapajos River (PA) this year.

Project considered structuring and priority by the Council Resolution no. 3 of the Conselho Nacional de Política Energética (CNPE), São Luiz de Tapajos, if it leaves the drawing board, will have considerable weight for the country. Of the 19,917 MW of hydroelectric plant projects included in the Plano Decenal de En- ergia (PDE 2022), the plant will represent more than 30% capac- ity, predicted to begin eight years from now.

Beyond the considerable block of hydroelectric energy, São Luiz de Tapajos will also pose a challenge to Brazilian engineering. The project will be the first of the country to adopt the concept of a plant platform, a solution to preserve the environment of a region where most of the potential of the country, estimated at 260 GW, is located.

“The government works to bid this plant this year,” informed Maurício Tolmasquim, president of the Energy Research Company (EPE) soon after the last energy auction of 2013. Coordinated by Electrobras, the group responsible for the viability studies has until July 31st to conclude the work, according to the deadline set by the National Electrical Energy Agency (Aneel).

The previous deadline to deliver the studies to the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources was November 20th of last year. Studies of São Luiz de Tapajos as well as of the hydroelectric plant at Jotobá (2.338 MW), in the same river, were resumed in August 2013.

It is estimated that, with 6,133 MW, Sao Luiz de Tapajos will produce, per year, almost 30,000 GWh. The plant will have a flooded two thousand square meters area, leaving a protected area of approximately 100,000 square meters.

Plant concept

Environmental barriers to bid new hydroelectric plant projects led the government to make use of the model of the platform plant, which means doing a project stuck in a forest region. The concept seeks to avoid the creation of villages and urban cores around hydroelectric plants, with great mobilization of workers, as usually happens in works of this size.

In the construction phase of the plant-platform model pre- sented years ago by Márcio Zimmerman, executive secretary of the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME), the workers worked in shifts, being transported to the site by helicopter or by land. When operational, the plant would have an automated the whole operation, requiring the work of less people.

“The idea of the plant platform is under human intervention to the surrounding environment. In other words, there is no loss of forests to urbanization, which allows preservation,” explains Leontina Pinto, executive director of Ingenuity, Research, Development Consulting.

Additional costs

According to estimates of the market, the construction of the two hydroelectric plants, in the Tapajós River, should be around R$26 billion, with about R$15 billion to build São Luiz de Tapajos. This value could be even higher since the expansion of the project to 7,880 MW is under review. The final value depends, of course, on other variables that will be incorporated into the final design.

"I don’t know the extra costs associated with the platform concept, but transportation by air must be more expensive than that of conventional construction," says Professor Leontina Pinto. "Like every new concept, I believe that their implementation will have unforeseen adjustments - which will be known only in the long term," she adds.

Although he considers it crucial to the country to explore the hydroelectric potential of the Amazon region, João Carlos Mello, president of the Thymos Energy and Consulting, considers the model of the plant platform utopia. For him, there is still no calculation of the extra cost that a work of such scope would, mainly, by logistics, would involve.

“Certainly, there will be a high cost,” he says. For him, if the planning wants to return a bit of the reservoirs, Tapajós, with a set of seven plants that add up to a potential of 14,000 MW, is a good way. The professor, Leontina Pinto reinforces, affirming that  the model platform does not imply giving up reservoirs. According to her, the construction and operation of the plant platform only eliminates the environmental cost of the implan- tation of urban cores. "It does not prevent the construction of reservoirs, because you can have a huge flooded area without roads or towns done for the accommodation of workers," says the director of Ingenuity. For her, it is more than time for the country to discuss the energetic model it wants.

Must we give up the Amazonian potential and face a possible shortage, including the environmental cost of heavy thermoelectric generation? Should we seek a more balanced solution?” she questions.

Data from the article "Why Brazil is swapping hydroelectric plants and their reservoirs for more expensive and polluting energy?" written by Márcio Tancredi, and Omar Ahmed Abbus, the Legislative Advisory of the Senate, shows how the ability of the electric sector to accumulate water reservoirs is falling in the mills auctioned between 2000 and 2012.

Of the 42 projects bid in the period, with a total of 28,800 MW, only 10 plants, with 1,940 MW, have reservoirs. With 26,800 MW, the other 32 work with the flow of the river. Or, only 6.73% of the capacity of generation comes from plants with reservoirs.

Socioeconomic pressure

However, even with the proposed construction of the model that will be adopted, it would have to face the environmental and indigenous matters in the region. As with the Belo Monte Hydro- electric Plant (11,300 MW), on the Xingu River, social and environ- mental pressures will be part of the daily lives of the whole process of elaboration and bid of São Luiz Tapajós, located in the region of the Mundurukú Indians. In the Federal Public Prosecutor of Pará there are already actions against the installation of the plant.

"The difficulties to build hydroelectric plants on the Tapajos and Xingu rivers are the same. And similarly, there is no way to determine if the rule of optimum utilization was fulfilled in stud- ies of the Tapajos basin. It is possible that self-restriction of the reduction of costs and the ease of environmental licensing are usually induced have influenced the inventory of the basin," points out the article from the Senate Legislative Advisory.