The largest power transmission auction ever held in Brazil was won by China's State Grid, which took the main project with expected contributions of 18 billion reais, Spain's Celeo Redes and Brazil's Alupar in a consortium with the Mercury fund.

The tender on the 15th of December guaranteed the contracting of 21.7 billion reais in investments in power transmission lines, which will expand the capacity to transport renewable energy generated in the Northeast to load centres in the Southeast.

The Chinese company will have to invest around 18 billion reais to erect the direct current (HVDC) bipole, which is expected to take 72 months to implement.

State Grid is one of the largest groups in the Brazilian transmission sector, controlling 24 concessionaires, of which 19 are its own and 5 are joint ventures. In all, the subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned company operates more than 16,000 kilometres of lines in the country.

(Source: Brasil 247)