I’ve dreamed my whole life of someday visiting Brazil. When Brazil won its bid for the 2014 World Cup, I thought… What better place to watch some world-class soccer?!! So when I heard that ABB—a major power and automation player throughout our industries—has been tasked with boosting transmission capacity and strengthening grid reliability for power to one of the key stadiums for next year’s World Cup, well, what can I say? Nós vamos invadir sua praia!!!
Furnas Centrais Elétricas gave ABB the order, worth about $30 million, to construct a new indoor transmission substation in downtown Rio de Janeiro to power the Maracanã Stadium and the adjacent neighborhood.
Brazil broke ground on Maracanã Stadium some 65 years ago, building the world’s largest stadium at the time to host close to 200,000 rabid futebol fans for the 1950 World Cup. It ended up being the site of Brazil’s heartbreaking 2-1 loss to Uruguay for the World Cup final that stunned the world—a game that has long been considered one of the biggest upsets in soccer history.
Along with six other match-ups, Maracanã will host the final game again for World Cup 2014—the first World Cup Brazil has hosted since 1950. The stadium has been completely rebuilt—not only for the World Cup, but also the 2016 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. Capacity now stands at just over 75,000 people, but it is still the largest stadium in Brazil.
Much to the chagrin and protest of taxpayers financing the stadium renovations throughout the country, Brazil is spending billions of dollars to prepare for the World Cup. As part of the updates, Brazil is boosting its power capacity and enhancing its transmission and distribution infrastructure to ensure that its electricity grid can meet the needs not only of the upcoming World Cup and Olympic games, but of its expanding economy as well. These sporting events are likely to place huge additional demands on the grid as hundreds of thousands of fans and visitors descend on the 12 host cities.
“These compact substations will enable additional power supplies required during the forthcoming global sporting events being hosted by Brazil and will reinforce the transmission grid for the future,” said Brice Koch, head of ABB’s Power Systems division.
ABB will design, supply, install and commission a new indoor substation to replace a 40-year-old installation in Grajau, near Maracanã Stadium. Because of the compact footprint of the gas-insulated switchgear (GIS), the new higher-capacity facility can be built on the same plot of land as the existing substation.
At 63 kA, the substation will have the highest short-circuit current interruption level of any GIS substation in Brazil. This rating refers to the maximum current that a circuit breaker is capable of interrupting to isolate a fault and protect the network. ABB will also install IEC-61850 substation automation, control and protection systems to enable local as well as remote control and monitoring.
Whatever the cup-winning fate may be this time of arguably the most soccer-loving nation in the world…the lights should stay on. Now if I can somehow angle a stadium tour from ABB…say, around the July timeframe next year…?...!!
