Itaipu Dam Technological Modernization, Foz do Iguaçu

Itaipu’s control systems were designed in the analog era, and the plant started generating in 1984. Electronics specified for a 30-year life have now run about four decades, and many of the parts are obsolete with no replacements on the market. The Itaipu Dam technological modernization swaps out that layer of the plant, unit by unit, while the 14 GW station on the Paraná River keeps running.

Itaipu Binacional, the Brazil-Paraguay entity that owns the plant, signed the main contract on April 29, 2022 with CMI (Consórcio Modernização de Itaipu). GE Vernova’s Brazilian business leads it, with Paraguayan partners CIE and Tecnoedil. The contract is worth about US$649 million and runs 14 years.

Project Scope

The heavy iron stays. Turbines, rotors and stators aren’t part of this job because they have far longer service lives. What’s being replaced is everything that watches and controls them: supervision, control and protection systems for all 20 generating units, a new SCADA platform and automation network, the gas-insulated substations, spillway gate and dam systems, auxiliary services, metering, and power and control cabling. A static frequency converter is going in as well. Modernization of the Right Bank substation, which ties the plant into Paraguay’s grid, is a separate package still being prepared for bid.

Preparation took about four years. Laser scanning of the powerhouse, dam and spillway finished in May 2023 and fed a BIM model. Itaipu built secure server rooms for the new systems, warehouses (Aponte Latorre, US$13.9 million) and Cintesc, a 1,257 m² integration and training center that opened in January 2025 and can train 100 people at once. Worley and Inconpar hold a 48-month, US$3.8 million engineering support contract that started in August 2023. Contracted spending totals roughly US$670 million.

Why It Matters

The hard part starts when a unit comes off line. The plan averages two units a year through 2036, which means each 700 MW machine has to be stripped of its old controls, rewired, tested and handed back without upsetting a plant that produced 72.9 million MWh in 2025.

The first outage is already sliding. Canal Solar reported in January 2026 that the first stoppage was due this year. By April, Brasil Energia was reporting 2027, with UG 18-A, one of the two units added in 2006, going first.

A year’s slip on a 14-year program isn’t alarming on its own. It does show where the schedule risk lives: not in the hardware, which has been bought, but in how many outage windows two national grids will tolerate.

Project Team & Details