The US Bureau of Reclamation and the Western Area Power Administration awarded the contract for the work to Synexus following a year of pilot testing of its Vista DSS at five northern California Central Valley Project (CVP) hydroelectric plants totalling 1188MW in generation capacity.
According to Synexus, its engineers will now install the Vista DSS at the CVP on two hydro plants with a generating capacity of 175MW on the American river and a 300MW scheme with two reservoirs on the Stanislaus river.
This will be followed in 2004 by a second phase of work that will see the installation of the Vista DSS to cover two pump generation plants and a number of pumping stations to provide irrigation water to the south of California.
The Vista system has already been put into use in projects under the umbrella of the Bonneville Power Administration, Reliant and Manitoba Hydro and, says Synexus, raises hydro power production by at least 2 to 5%.
