OREANDA-NEWS. May 26, 2015. In January this year, Alstom and Andrade Gutierrez started a joint venture for the production of towers for power generation. TEN (Torres E?licas do Nordeste) is located in the city of Jacobina, in Bahia (Brazil). A little more than three months later, the unit has just delivered the first T89 tower of the ECO 122 wind turbine. Equipped with state-of-the-art technology for the manufacture of metallic towers for wind farms.

”The delivery of the first tower is a landmark for all who participated in its construction. We had huge challenges to reach this goal as scheduled. To be part as a large supplier of the wind power supply chain, contributing for the growth of this power source inside the Brazilian power mix, will be our great goal”, highlights Charles Filog?nio, Commercial Director – Renewable of Andrade Gutierrez Energia.   

The piece, which weighs around 200 tons and is 89 meters high, was concluded in late April. Next to the main current and potential wind projects of the region, TEN occupies a built-up area of 22,000 sq. meters on a 140,000 sq meters plot. The unit took a year to be built and involved around 400 people in the project.

“Concluding the first deliveries in a fast and efficient way is very important and shows that we are ready to meet the strong demand of the Brazilian wind market, collaborating for the development of renewable power generation in the country”, says Pierre Fran?ois Chenevier, Senior Vice President of Alstom Wind for Latin America.

Around 200 people, including employees of the unit and outsourced collaborators, were involved in the delivery of the first tower.


Qualification

To produce the equipment and count on specialized labor, AG and Alstom signed a partnership with the National Service for Industrial Learning (Senai) of Bahia, to qualify professionals to work in this new segment. Of all employees involved in the first delivery, around 40% came from this educational process.


AG and Alstom

The joint venture, announced last year, received investments of around 92 million Reais and is composed 51% by Andrade Gutierrez and 49% by Alstom.

With capacity to produce 200 metallic towers a year (initial capacity) as of 2015, the unit collaborates directly to the region’s economic and social growth by increasing the production chain and generating new jobs. In all, when the plant is fully operational, it will be 250 direct employees, in addition to 600 indirect ones.

TEN is the third wind plant of Alstom in Latin America, and the company expects to produce 200 towers in 2015, the equivalent to four machines a week. To serve this demand, Alstom’s unit in Canoas, in southern Brazil, is transferring technology to TEN. 


Sustainability

In several of their projects, Andrade Gutierrez and Alstom develop actions to reduce the consumption of water. The gardens of Torres E?licas do Nordeste (TEN), for example, do not depend on rain or rivers to be irrigated. The 225 thousand monthly liters of water necessary to their maintenance are obtained through the treatment of effluents generated in the plant’s production.

The measure directly contributes for environmental preservation in the region, as the treatment of effluents to be used at the site reduces the consumption of water. This is because the 225 thousand liters of water that would be used to irrigate the gardens are obtained with the treatment of these liquid residues. When the factory is operating in three shifts, as of the second half of the year, the amount of water produced through the treatment of effluents will be 432 thousand liters.