The centre will be located in Taubaté (SP) where the company has its largest hydro manufacturing factory. It will focus on Kaplan solutions for alstom Hydro worldwide and will be composed of an R&D team and a test rig. The R&D team will start its activities in Taubaté in early 2012 and the test rig is expected to be operational on mid 2013.
The test rig will be prepared to test Kaplan turbines for projects located mainly in Brazil and Asia and will research and develop Kaplan projects.
Alstom is already active in the Brazilian Kaplan turbines market and recently signed a contract to supply the Santo Antonio do Jari project in the North of the country.
“With this Global Technology Centre in Taubaté, Alstom will put Brazil in the map of the countries that are reference in technology and responsible for exporting knowledge. We are willing to give more visibility to Brazilian engineering capabilities and to show all the innovative potential of Brazil,” said Philippe Delleur, President of Alstom Brazil. “The Technology Centre will also be a way to establish long term relationship with local universities, to sponsor research programs and to invest in developments in partnership with students.”
Alstom’s network of hydro Global Technology Centres was created to capitalize on areas of specific regional expertise and leverage that knowledge to benefit customers around the world. Other centres in the alstom-hydro network include the high-tech scale model test laboratory in Grenoble, France (lead centre), the Pelton turbine-testing centre in Vadodara, India, the centre specializing in generators in Birr, Switzerland, and the recently announced centre in Sorel-Tracy, Canada, serving as the company’s global hub for innovation in hydro retrofit processes and technology.
