The contract commences on 1 April and expires on 31 March 2014.
The plants in the Mondego river basin have combined installed capacity of 360MW, including 270MW of reversible pump capacity at the 336MW Aguieira facility. The Raiva plant has an installed capacity of 24MW.
Iberdrola sees the contract as a further step in its participation in the hydro sector in Portugal. In January, it announced plans to build the 1200MW Alto Tamega project in northern Portugal.
The Alto Tamega scheme calls for four dams (Gouvaes, Padroselos, Alto Tamega and Daivoes), four power plants, approximately Euro 1.7B (US$2.3B) of investment and is to be completed by 2018.
The plants will comprise two pump turbine facilities with total capacity of 900MW, and two conventional generation plants with 234MW of total capacity. A total of approximately 2000GWh of electricity is expected to be generated per year.
