Access to electricity improves quality of life, creates jobs, promotes investment and industrial growth, and thus reduces poverty.

edtl and HydroTimor team at the Mainina sinkhole: Diverted water will power the country.

Photo: Basil Rolandsen / Bouvet Photography

Hydroelectric power is a clean, renewable energy source, and when done properly environmentally sound. While expensive to build, the plant is easy to maintain, and may produce cheap electricity for 100 years. The Iralalaru hydroelectric power station, combined with a new national transmission grid will dramatically improve our supply of electricity.

Near Lospalos, the Irasiquiru river transports water from the Iralalaru lake and surroundings to the Mainina sinkhole, where it disappears. To where, nobody knows, but advanced testing indicates that it does not resurface in Lautem.

Most of the water will be diverted into a 4558 metres long tunnel/pipeline, to an underground power station where it will generate electricity before entering the Timor Sea.

The water flows through mountain tunnels and buried pipeline, not to disturb the surrounding national park. This system also conceals cables transporting electricity back from the underground power station, hidden inside the mountain, to the national grid. No roads lead to the station area, only small operator’s houses and a jetty reveals it. Access to the tunnels is from Malahara village at the edge of the national park, from where a transmission line to Lospalos will be visible.

As the river water arrives in the powerhouse 318 metres below the intake, its energy is quite forceful. Two turbines can produce a maximum of 28 million watts (28 mw), or a total of 189 billion watt-hours (189 gwh) per year. This is much more than today’s production in Timor-Leste, at a lower cost.

Preparations include advanced testing like water analysis and core drilling.

Photo: Basil Rolandsen / Bouvet Photography

A new, national grid is necessary to share the electricity. First step, to be done in tandem with the Iralalaru constructions, is linking Lospalos, Baucau, Manatuto and Dili through a 132 kv high-voltage transmission line. Steel towers at about 250 metres intervals will stretch the distance, mainly through savannah style vegetation. In addition to electricity, the grid may carry fibre-optic cabling for telephone and internet, connecting the districts.

Linking communities through this central net will provide stable, reliable electricity 24 hours a day. It will replace many small, isolated, polluting and expensive diesel generating systems, and directly assist in reducing rural poverty.

Hydroelectric power projects have been implemented in Norway for more than 100 years, and the Iralalaru project has utilised this experience through cooperation with the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (nve). The Norwegian jv Norconsult/Norplan has contributed with consultancies, and the Government of Norway has funded the planning phase. A helping hand from one friend to another.