Lugarawa hydropower plant

It is a high head hydropower plant, designed to operate both in parallel mode with the national 33 kV grid, and to power the rural grid serving 20 remote villages. To better follow the load diagram of the isolated grid, the plant was equipped with a daily storage basin with a capacity of approximately 1,600 m³.
The hydraulic scheme includes a lateral intake, headrace pipeline with free surface or low pressure hydraulic operation depending on the flow rates, storage basin and penstock. The electromechanical equipment consists of a two-jet Pelton turbine with a rated rotation speed of 1,000 min-1, connected to a synchronous generator by means of an elastic coupling.
The client of the project was the Italian NGO ACRA from Milan. The project was funded mainly (about 75%) by the European Commission under the EuropeAid program, and partially by the Word Bank, through the Tanzanese Rural Energy Agency, by the UNIDO and by the EEP, Energy and Environment Partnership, funded essentially by the Northern Europe countries.
The rural grid consists of 137 km of MV lines, 94 km of LV and 32 transformers 33kV/400V to distribute energy to the users, while the connection with the national grid is made through 17 km of MV line.
Frosio Next followed the entire design process, from the first site’ survey to assess the feasibility of the project, up to the construction design. Frosio Next was involved during the construction phase as works supervisor and during commissioning, also providing assistance to the Client in the preparation of tender in compliance with the EC standard and in the choice of suppliers.