8/12/14

Today was our first company visit, and we hit the road around 8:30 for Capivari de Baixo, a small, seemingly rural town with a few shops and restaurants along a main road.  I could tell that they weren’t used to visitors by the way that the heads were turning as our bus drove through the Brazilian countryside. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant with a buffet, where I got a feeling that our group was the topic of conversation for many of the locals. I also was faced with the task of trying to finish whatever was on my plate out of respect, even when I grabbed something that wasn’t my cup of tea. 

After lunch, we made our way to Tractabel Energia's Capivari de Baixo location, where we attended an informational session about the company. We learned that while most of Brazil's energy production (~80%) is government regulated, Tractabel dominates the private sector with their thermal, hydro, and alternative (renewable) electricity generation facilities. They are addressing the need to provide sustainable energy by researching new alternative power sources like wind, solar, and oceanic waves, while maintaining energy security by taking advantage of thermal energy sources (coal). We also took a tour of their coal-fired power plant, where we saw the control room for units 5 and 6 of seven, and got to peak inside the generator portion of unit 6. I had never seen anything of this scale before, and I definitely found a new appreciation for power generation, something that we generally take for granted, when I saw it first hand.