OEC to build photovoltaic plant in Pernambuco

Brazil’s scorching northeast sun will be the source of energy for the country’s most modern photovoltaic plant. OEC – Odebrecht Engenharia & Construção and Alubar Energia were hired under an EPC (engineering, equipment acquisition and construction) regime to build OnSolar, the first photovoltaic power plant of the OnCorp Group, a venture that will have the capacity to generate 2.5 MW of power. The plant will be built on 50,000 square meters of land in the municipality of Ribeirão, 90 kilometers from Recife, in a project that should generate 50 direct jobs in the five months in which the work will be carried out. The contract value is R$ 11 million.

The energy produced at the plant will be directed to the distributed generation market, that is, it will supply the surroundings of the enterprise, which will have bifacial photovoltaic panel technology and a solar tracking system (tracker) that follows the movement of the sun, seeking greater efficiency and use of solar irradiation for the generation of energy. The process of manufacturing and importing the main materials and equipment that will make up the project began in October. The work is scheduled to start in the first half of December and should be completed in April 2020.

“We are using the most modern solution for solar energy generation, such as the structures for fixing modules with a solar tracking system and bifacial modules with 430W of power, as well as high-power inverters with integrated string boxes (insulating protectors for the case of short circuit) and monitoring system via WiFi,” says André Queiroz, director of OEC responsible for the works. The technology of the bifacial photovoltaic modules allows generating energy both with the direct irradiation in the upper part of the plates and with the indirect irradiation, through the soil surface, in the lower part of the modules.

According to João Mattos, director of OnCorp, this project demonstrates the OnCorp Group efforts in seeking solutions for energy generation from renewable sources, being the first of its kind in the company, basing in the northeast region an investment that seeks to open a new niche and, at the same time, establish presence in a region that has much to offer for the national energy matrix: “The partnership of the OnCorp Group with OEC and Alubar was born from joint relationships that sought to combine OEC / Alubar’s expertise in executing projects with the excellence of the OnCorp Group in launching projects in the area of energy generation, adopting concepts based on efficiency, robustness and reliability”, he says