Bolivia's ENDE Expects to Move Forward with 990-Megawatt Cachuela Esperanza Hydropower Project

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Bolivia's state-owned utility company Empresa Nacional de Electricidad (ENDE) (Cochabamba, Bolivia) expects to move forward with the construction of the 990-megawatt (MW) Cachuela Esperanza hydropower station.

The facility will be located near Cachuela Esperanza, from where it receives its name, on the Beni River, about 13 miles downstream from the site at which the Beni and Mamoré rivers merge to form River Madera.

With the Jirau (3,450 MW) and Santo Antônio (3,168 MW) hydropower plants under construction in the neighboring Brazilian state of Rondônia, the Cachuela Esperanza project would bring hydropower generation in the Madera basin to 7,608 MW. This figure is important, as much of the energy produced at Cachuela Esperanza is expected to be exported to Brazil.

Cachuela Esperanza is still going through preliminary designing, though ENDE has confirmed that the facility will consist of 18 55-MW bulb hydraulic turbines. The initial environmental assessment for this project is being done by Tecsult, a subsidiary of AECOM Technology Corporation (NYSE:ACM) (Los Angeles, California), and should be submitted to project officials before the end of the month.

Authorization for expenditure must still be granted by ENDE. This should occur around the middle of this year. Cachuela Esperanza's estimated total investment is $1.5 billion. Also, public hearings will need to be conducted in order to apply for the environmental license. These hearings will be held throughout 2010.

Once these steps are concluded, investors will be sought in the project, and if everything goes on according to schedule, construction should start in 2012. However, ENDE's officials told Industrial Info that both the execution of the project and the way that contracts will be awarded has not been determined.

If a general contractor is awarded, it will bid out for major equipment suppliers, such as the providers of the turbines, generators, gates, etc., as well as key engineering and construction needs, such as the designing and building of the foundations.

It is estimated that construction and commissioning of the Cachuela Esperanza hydropower plant will take about eight years, which means that it would not be operational before 2020.

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