On Thursday, we ventured into the mountainous wilderness between Sao Paulo and the coast to visit the Henry Borden hydroelectric plant. This plant is really cool.
Firstly, it was built in 1922 and is still running with most of the same equipment today. It provides a total of 889 MW to the city of Sao Paulo. (Remember that Tanquinho, the largest solar plant in Brazil, provides just 0.19 MW).
The guide touted that one of the best things about this hydroelectric facility is that is doesn't redirect the water flow of the river. It still follows its natural course upon exiting the piping, so the environmental impact is very small for the amount of power that is being received in return.
There's two parts to it: an above ground half that resembles a giant enclosed waterslide, and an underground half that captures the flow from an underground river. Each consists of 16 turbines spinning 8 generators, producing 400+ MW in each half.
For the tour, because its free, they requested that we bring a food donation like a kilo of rice or beans per person.
The bountiful harvest
This was a working small-scale replica of how the turbines are used. The gear-like wheel in the center is the turbine, which is turned by 4 jets of water firing from nozzles. You can see one pipe in this photo coming from the bottom. There is a nozzle that jets that stream towards the turbine.
The man in the photo above was our guide who showed us the place.
Now that was the small scale replica. This massive piece right here is one of the nozzles, full size.
And this is a single arm of the full-size turbine.
We donned hard hats, glasses, and earplugs for the tour. Earplugs were really the only necessary ones. Hi Gustavo! He came along to translate for the tour guide.
Here is one of the active units. The turbine is enclosed in the gray semicircle, while the large white box contains the generator
Here's what the turbines look like out of their boxes. There's about seven of them there.
The giant waterslide-looking piping down the mountainside. Pretty interesting right? It's 700 meters high, and 1.5 km of piping. The flow rate of water through this plant is 153 m^3 /second. Due to the large height drop, a large amount of power can be generated from this
Doggie! Probably a stray. New hostel pet? I wish!
"This area we'll enter is technically considered rainforest. Does anyone have a bug allergy?"
"Like a bee allergy you mean?"
"No, like mosquitos."
"Uhhh...."
Fortunately no one contracted dengue during our walk to the underground half of the plant.
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