Cheves Hydro

completed

Cheves is a greenfield project to build, own and operate a run-of-the-river 168.2 MW hydro electricity scheme along the Huaura and Checras rivers in the provinces of Huaura and Oyón in the central Peruvian Andes, approximately 245 km north of the city of Lima. The project involves the construction of three dams, a 18 km-long water conveying tunnel system, an underground powerhouse, and a 77km 220kV electricity transmission line, from Cheves to Huacho, to connect the project to the National Interconnected System.The total project footprint will occupy an area of 67.5 hectares of mostly arid land with no, or minimal, land use. No physical displacement of population will be required. The alignment of the transmission line was planned over mountainous areas with little or no land use, and in areas near existing roads so as to minimize the need for new accesses and their associated impacts. The transmission line does not interfere with villages or occupied areas and interception of agricultural areas is minimal. The transmission line’s footprint is mostly limited to transmission tower foundations and improvement and/or construction of new access roads that are expected to be minimal. The Huaura river dam, located about 2.5 km above the confluence with the Checras river, will be a 6-m high 35-m long concrete dam that will form no reservoir, but will transfer the water to the Checras reservoir via 2.5-m diameter tunnel. The Checras reservoir is designed to regulate the flows from the Checras and Huaura rivers, and it will consist of a concrete gravity 21-m-high 140-m-wide dam, with three radial floodgates and a spillway. This reservoir will flood an area of approximately 7.2 hectares (mostly in the natural floodplain) and will hold 580,000 m3 at its maximum operating water level. A 10-km long headrace 4.50 m to 6.00 m diameter tunnel will be built from the Checras reservoir to the powerhouse. The underground powerhouse will include two Pelton vertical axis turbines, each with 84-MW capacity. The third and last dam will be the Picunche dam and compensation reservoir, which will be built at approximately 9.6 km downstream of the tailrace tunnel outlet, and will consist of a 155-m-wide and 11.5-m-high dam. The resulting reservoir will hold 414,000 m3 of water. Additionally the project includes three (3) 80-m-long sedimentation chambers, four (4) quarries, six (6) spoil areas for waste materials (surplus rock and soil from excavations), roads habilitation, two (2) worker camps. Project construction schedule is 34 months. The transmission line will be built in 12 months. An early-start construction phase (e.g. construction of access roads, development of the three workers camps, and mobilization of the Construction Contractor) is planned to begin in the last quarter of 2010. The main civil construction works are expected to begin in January 2011. The target start-date for electricity generation is the first quarter of 2014.Cheves Empresa de Generación Eléctrica S.A., the special purpose vehicle created to develop the project, is 100% indirectly owned by SN Power. SN Power is a Norwegian company dedicated to invest, develop and operate renewable energy projects (mainly hydropower projects) in emerging markets. It was established in 2002 as a 60:40 joint venture between Statkraft, Norway''s public power utility and Europe’s largest generator of renewable energy; and Norfund, a leading Norwegian risk capital investor in emerging markets that is funded by the Norwegian Government. IFC has a long-standing relationship with SN Power with a total of seven IFC investments in Nepal, India, the Philippines and Chile.