The Belo Monte Dam in Brazil

!engineering !architecture !macacos

Some pics and basic info about the Belo Monte hydropower plant.

Located near the town of Altamira in the state of Pará (in the mist of the Amazon forest) it was build on the Xingu river between 2011 and 2016.

The river was transposed and two dams were build. Belo Monte which is the hydropower plant, 88 meters tall and with its 18 Francis turbines it has an installed capacity of 11,233 MW. This makes it the largest 100% Brazilian dam (Itaipú, the largest and number 1 by energy production is owned 50% by Brazil and 50% by Paraguay).

49% of Belo Monte belongs to Eletrobras, the rest to other pension funds and private investors, the company organized to run it is called "Norte Energia".

The second dam is the "vertedouro" located at the Pimantel site.

It's a water dam with a transposing channel connected to take water from its reservoir to Belo Monte. The Pimantel dam has no turbines, it only has a water discharge.

The maximum discharge capacity for Pimantel is 63,000 m^3/s. While the discharge that goes through the turbines in Belo Monte is of 775 m^3/s for each turbine.

Pic of the Generators being installed.

In total over 3 million cubic meters of concrete and 160k metric tons of steel were used during the construction. Most of the cement was provided by Itambé and Votorantim.

The dam attracted a lot of criticism by environmental groups and indigenous activists like the Cacique Raoni

But leftist Presidents Lula and Dilma were the ones to approve the project.

At least Lula is good virtue signaling about environmentalism so annoying euros can leave us alone.

The construction of this dam is extremely dramatic as the construction site became a crime infested shithole (is in the middle of the rainforest and criminals offered services from drugs to prostitution to the workers). But that's another story. The dam flooded an area of 478 sq kilometers.

Schematics of the dam.