Noja Power wins $12m deal to boost Brazil’s grid
July 8th, 2013Australia-headquartered switchgear engineers Noja Power has won a $12m deal to boost the safety and reliability of Brazil’s electricity supply.
The contract was awarded by Latin America’s largest utility Eletrobras and will see Noja’s Brazilian arm install and link its OSM15 and OSM38 automatic circuit reclosers to six operation centres.
Eletrobras will monitor and control the units, optimising network operational characteristics such as protection and load shedding.
The deal comes as the Brazilian government is encouraging Eletrobras to modernise its electricity generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure.
The government has implemented a modernisation programme called Project Energy+ which aims to greater integrate renewable energy resources such as hydroelectric, solar and wind into the country’s energy mix.
In addition, grid improvements under the project will reduce power loss, eliminating the need to add more centralised conventional generating capacity to meet increased demand. As such, Brazil is expected to cumulatively spend $27.7bn on smart grid investments by 2022.
“Brazil is a rapidly developing country and the government is encouraging power utilities to upgrade their electricity infrastructure to meet the needs of the future,” said Bruno Kimura, Noja’s managing director in Brazil.
He said Noja’s automatic circuit reclosers “will be a fundamental component of Brazil’s new smart grid because they allow utilities such as Eletrobras to closely match supply and demand, rapidly switch in renewable energy sources and protect expensive infrastructure in the case of faults”.
