Santo Antônio Dam
The Santo Antônio - Dam ( Usina Santo Antônio Hidrelétrica ) is an under construction dam with a hydroelectric plant on the Madeira River about 6 km southwest of Porto Velho in the Brazilian state of Rondônia.
The dam is part of a complex of four planned hydroelectric plants on the Madeira River. This consists of two dams in Brazil ( the Santo Antonio dam with 3150 MW in Porto Velho and Jirau Dam with 3300 MW about 100 km upstream ), a third on the border between Brazil and Bolivia, and a fourth in Bolivia. The two in Brazil, Santo Antonio and Jirau, are currently under construction, while the smaller upstream are still in the planning phase. Because of the power outages in Brazil from 2001 to 2002 its construction was accelerated in 2009 and is now to Santo Antonio in 2012 to go into operation and Jirau 2013. The construction costs for Santo Antônio is estimated at 7 billion U.S. $, this includes navigation locks, transmission lines and environmental restoration measures.
Planning
The Santo Antônio - Dam was designed as Laufwasserkraftwerk. The shut-off of the dam will be a 13.9 m high and 3100 m long gravity dam that creates a reservoir with a surface area of 271 km ², 164 km ² of which are the original river bed. The hydroelectric power plant has four sets of Kaplan bulb turbines with a total of 44 pieces, each with a rated capacity of 71.6 MW, the total of 3150.4 MW. Kaplan bulb turbines are very similar to Kaplan turbines, except that they are mounted horizontally, so that the force redirection and efficiency are better. The hydropower plant will have a maximum discharge of 24 684 m³ / s have. There are two spillways, a main relief and an auxiliary discharge on the southern abutment. Both together are a discharge capacity of 84,000 m³ / s have to regulate the water level in the reservoir. The dam also gets two fish ladders and a ship lock.