Infrastructure
DEG finances private hydropower plant in Peru
The privately owned hydroelectric plant Poechos 1 of Sindicato Energético S.A. (SINERSA), with a capacity of 15.4 MW, has gone on stream in the northwest of Peru, on the border to Ecuador. Thanks to Poechos 1, 20,000 people are now supplied with electricity for the first time.
The Poechos Reservoir was built in 1975 for irrigation purposes and the construction of small hydroelectric plants taken into consideration at that stage. However, the country did not have the means to realise the plan. After the opening up of the electricity market to private companies in the 1990s, a small group of domestic and international investors adopted the plan. They founded SINERSA and built the 12.5 MW Curumuy power plant, which was Peru's first private hydroelectric power station.
With Poechos 1, a second, smaller power plant is now producing electricity using the water from the reservoir; the water is subsequently redirected back into rivers and used for agricultural irrigation. The electric power is supplied to the partly privatised regional energy-supply company Electronoreste as part of long-term electricity purchasing agreements and then fed into the national grid. Electronoreste has installed distribution stations in order to be able to supply households in remote areas as well.
Poechos 1 was financed by DEG together with the Inter American Investment Corporation (IIC) and the infrastructure fund Corporación Interamericana para el Financiamiento de Infraestructura (CIFI).
Long-term finance for the first private wind park in Brazil
Northeast Brazil has one of the most attractive wind climates in Latin America. This is where Wobben Windpower Ceará Ltda., a subsidiary of Enercon GmbH, Aurich, built the first privately operated windpark in Brazil. With only 30 turbines the park generates 42 million kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to meet the annual needs of more than 8,000 households.
DEG is the only lender after commercial banks had refrained from long-term project finance. With this project, DEG is supporting a German medium-sized enterprise in its internationalization strategy. By entering the Brazilian market, Enercon, which already manufactures the rotor blades for its E-40 turbines at two locations in Brazil, is playing a pioneering role for the whole of Latin America.
Using renewable energy will protect the Amazon forests from some 57,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. This is the quantity a coal power station in Germany emits to generate the same amount of power.
