What to do with so many water in the region of Missions? Paraguay and Brazil found the answer : build a big dam to use so many energy.
The realization of such a project took 14 years of intensive work. And the result is huge as it furnishes 95% of Paraguay’s electrivity and 25% for Brazil!
Itaipu Binacional, the company, proposes a free visit of the site. It is well organised. A bus makes a tour of it, that enables to notice the immensity of the project. However the explanations was a bit poor and we would have like to visit the turbines. But to do it you need to send a written demand to the company…
Anyway, the visit enabled to appreciate the 6km long of the dam and the artificial lake retaining more than 29000 Hm³ of water! If you do not speak the Hm³, imagine it required the equivalent of 400 Eiffel tours in steel and the quantity of concrete as to build the city of Rio de Janeiro. At a speed of 20 floors of a building every hour!
If you wonder about the excedent of water evacuated on a kind of trampoline and then send into the air. Well it is to prevent for excess of currents which would erode the bottom of the river.
Impressionnant ! (Surtout les équivalents en Tours d’Eiffel etc, très parlant). Et en plus je vais absolument vous dédicacer quelques lignes de ma copie de géo pour le concours (thème : les énergies dans le monde) ! =)