Petit-Saut: a 44-panorama virtual tour for the inauguration of the biomass plant and sawmill
On the shore of the Petit-Saut reservoir, Voltalia and its subsidiary Triton Guyane built a 10.5 MW biomass power plant and a sawmill side by side. The lake’s drowned timber is harvested there: species suited to sawing go to the sawmill, the others are turned into electricity. We have been following this project since 2022: for Voltalia, a virtual tour of the plant construction rebuilt after each photo campaign; for Triton, a monthly photo visit to the sawmill since March 2023.
A tour plan agreed with both operators
For the inauguration on 14 October 2025, the two companies wanted to present the finished site to their guests. On 5 September we proposed a plan of 47 viewpoints: 21 on the plant side, 23 on the sawmill side and 3 general views. Approved on 10 September, it was photographed from the 22nd, and on 1 October each operator named its panoramas: the site’s biomass manager for the plant, Triton’s project manager for the sawmill. The delivered tour has 44 of them, aerial and on the ground: from the plant entrance to the supervision room, the turbine hall and the flue gas treatment, and, on the sawmill side, from the quay and the lake harvesting area to the timber yard, the kiln and the workshops.
Nine albums complete the tour: photos of the northern and southern platforms taken during the site monitoring in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
Online, offline and on a large screen
A first version was shared online on 1 October, an adaptive-resolution version on the 4th and the full-resolution version on the evening of the 13th. On the day of the event the tour was to run on a 43-inch Windows screen, so we also delivered an offline version that runs without a connection.
The inauguration video was edited from the site monitoring archive, photos and time-lapses, and from the September shoot. It went through several versions between 3 and 13 October, following feedback from both companies.
Before and after the inauguration
This tour followed the ten versions of the plant construction tour, the last one in August 2025 with 27 panoramas. The monitoring also produced three time-lapses, including the sawmill one, started on 1 July 2025 and extended until 18 November. The inauguration tour has remained online on our hosting; in 2026 Triton commissioned from us a new tour of the sawmill and the lake, a corporate film and the stockpile volumes of its platforms.
