By Douglas Marin

Siquirres, Costa Rica, Jun 11 (EFE).- Considered the second largest work of infrastructure in the region after the Panama Canal, the Reventazon Hydroelectric Plant on Costa Rica’s Caribbean side, is getting its finishing touches before starting up at full capacity and becoming the largest electricity generator in Central America.

Located in the green basin of the Reventazon River close to the Siquirres community in the Caribbean province of Limon, this gem of Costa Rican engineering already has three of its four electricity-generating turbines working and is 99 percent complete.

The last turbine is planned to start operating late this year and will bring the plant to a total production of 305 megawatts, equivalent to the amount consumed by 525,000 homes in a country of 4.7 million inhabitants.

The construction, valued at $1.2 billion, was entirely designed and built by the state-run Costa Rican Electricity Institute, or ICE, and was financed by local and international banks.

The power plant could also sell energy to other Central American countries if that should become necessary.

The ICE engineer and director of the hydroelectric project, Luis Roberto Rodriguez, told EFE during a tour of the structure that this is one of the works included in the ICE expansion plan and has been a huge challenge.

Rodriguez said that since 2010 some 4,500 laborers have been working here 24 hours a day, which has allowed the proposed construction and operations to be completed in the time promised to the project’s financiers.

This hydroelectric plant, considered by ICE to be the largest work of infrastructure and engineering in Costa Rican history, has a dam 130 meters (426 feet) high, which made possible the creation of a giant reservoir measuring 6.9 sq. kilometers (2.7 sq. miles) with a capacity for storing three months worth of generating capacity.

A series of tunnels 14 meters (46 feet) in diameter and a total of 4.2 kilometers (2.6 miles) long serve to divert the Reventazon River and send the water to the generating plant through a giant steel tube 8.6 meters (28 feet) in diameter and 905 meters (2,967 feet) long.

However, the Reventazon Hydroelectric Plant will soon be Central America’s second largest – ICE is already planning a hydroelectric plant that will have twice its generating capacity with 630 megawatts. EFE