El Salto Dam ( es, Presa El Salto), located on the

Guadalquivir River The Guadalquivir (, also , , ) is the fifth-longest river in the Iberian Peninsula and the second-longest river with its entire length in Spain. The Guadalquivir is the only major navigable river in Spain. Currently it is navigable from the Gulf ...

in the municipal district of El Carpio ( Province of Córdoba,

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

), comprises a

dam A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use, a ...

and its corresponding

hydroelectric Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined and ...

power station A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid. Many p ...

. Built for storage of water for electricity generation and irrigation, the dam is situated near the 3.3 km mark on the Pedro Abad-Adamuz highway (CO-412). Its

Neo-Mudéjar Neo-Mudéjar is a type of Moorish Revival architecture practised in the Iberian Peninsula and to a far lesser extent in Ibero-America. This architectural movement emerged as a revival of Mudéjar style. It was an architectural trend of the late 19 ...

design is the result of a collaboration between

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

Casto Fernández Shaw and

engineers Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...

Carlos Mendoza and Antonio del Águila. The Madrid-based engineering

consulting firm A consulting firm or simply consultancy is a professional service firm that provides expertise and specialised labour for a fee, through the use of consultants. Consulting firms may have one employee or thousands; they may consult in a broad range ...

undertook construction of the dam between 1918 and 1922. Since its inception, the dam has proved valuable to the local population for its contribution to the development and economic expansion of the area.

Design

Built on the site of some old

water mills A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in the production of ...

, the dam creates a

grade Grade most commonly refers to: * Grade (education), a measurement of a student's performance * Grade, the number of the year a student has reached in a given educational stage * Grade (slope), the steepness of a slope Grade or grading may also ref ...

in the

riverbed A stream bed or streambed is the bottom of a stream or river (bathymetry) or the physical confine of the normal water flow ( channel). The lateral confines or channel margins are known as the stream banks or river banks, during all but flood ...

through the use of two

abutments An abutment is the substructure at the ends of a bridge span or dam supporting its superstructure. Single-span bridges have abutments at each end which provide vertical and lateral support for the span, as well as acting as retaining walls ...

, one on each bank of the river, and five interior

buttresses A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral (si ...

. The buttresses, which sustain the bridge and the six

sluice gates Sluice ( ) is a word for a channel controlled at its head by a movable gate which is called a sluice gate. A sluice gate is traditionally a wood or metal barrier sliding in grooves that are set in the sides of the waterway and can be considered ...

, also hold up the metal structure bearing the machines that operate the gates. The abutment on the right bank forms an arched

portal Portal often refers to: * Portal (architecture), an opening in a wall of a building, gate or fortification, or the extremities (ends) of a tunnel Portal may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Gaming * ''Portal'' (series), two video games ...

over the roadway and houses the access stairway to the control room, whose crowning octagonal

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * Mi ...

once bore a

dome A dome () is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a m ...

. This dome, the

horseshoe arch The horseshoe arch (; Spanish: "arco de herradura"), also called the Moorish arch and the keyhole arch, is an emblematic arch of Islamic architecture, especially Moorish architecture. Horseshoe arches can take rounded, pointed or lobed form. His ...

and

alfiz The alfiz (, from Andalusi Arabic ''alḥíz'', from Standard Arabic ''alḥáyyiz'', meaning 'the container';Alf ...

, the simple and double windows, and the handrail supports all belong to the Neo-Mudéjar style. The entire

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wi ...

structure is covered with a facing of blocks in imitation of stretcher and header bond

masonry Masonry is the building of structures from individual units, which are often laid in and bound together by mortar; the term ''masonry'' can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are bricks, building ...

. The upper metal structure, a

lattice Lattice may refer to: Arts and design * Latticework, an ornamental criss-crossed framework, an arrangement of crossing laths or other thin strips of material * Lattice (music), an organized grid model of pitch ratios * Lattice (pastry), an ornam ...

box girder, initially held a wooden platform that has since been replaced by a grate. The motors that power the gears and chains used to raise the sluice gates are housed here in protective casings. A traveling

bridge crane An overhead crane, commonly called a bridge crane, is a type of Crane (machine), crane found in industrial environments. An overhead crane consists of two parallel Rail profile, rails seated on longitudinal I-beams attached to opposite steel ...

projects from the upstream side of the girder. From within its two-story wooden cabin, the operator is able to stack metal beams in slots parallel to the sluice gates in order to retain the water and allow the gates to be isolated. The crane is also used to lift motor and gear assembly casings. In addition to its carefully designed mechanisms, the dam has an important artistic value and is in a good state of preservation.

El Carpio Hydroelectric Power Station

El Carpio Power Station is situated on the lower side of a

meander A meander is one of a series of regular sinuous curves in the channel of a river or other watercourse. It is produced as a watercourse erodes the sediments of an outer, concave bank ( cut bank) and deposits sediments on an inner, convex bank ...

of the Guadalquivir, across from the dam. Also built in 1922, the plant uses three

turbine A turbine ( or ) (from the Greek , ''tyrbē'', or Latin ''turbo'', meaning vortex) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work. The work produced by a turbine can be used for generating e ...

generators to produce electricity. It belongs to

Endesa Endesa, S.A. (, originally an initialism for ''Empresa Nacional de Electricidad, S.A''.) is a Spanish multinational electric utility company, the largest in the country. The firm, a majority-owned subsidiary of the Italian utility company Enel, ...

, Spain's largest

utility company A public utility company (usually just utility) is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and r ...

. As a

run-of-the-river Run-of-river hydroelectricity (ROR) or run-of-the-river hydroelectricity is a type of hydroelectric generation plant whereby little or no water storage is provided. Run-of-the-river power plants may have no water storage at all or a limited amou ...

power plant, which utilizes the natural flow of water, it has practically no water reserve; its generating capacity therefore depends on the condition of the river. Water is drawn from the upstream dam through a tunnel and deposited next to the power station in a small tank capable of holding . From there, it passes through the turbines and returns to the river. The kinetic energy from flowing water is used by the Francis turbines at a

flow rate Flow rate may refer to: * Flow measurement, a quantification of bulk fluid movement * Mass flow rate, the mass of a substance which passes per unit of time * Volumetric flow rate, the volume of fluid which passes per unit time ** Discharge (hydrol ...

of per machine to generate

mechanical energy In Outline of physical science, physical sciences, mechanical energy is the sum of potential energy and kinetic energy. The principle of conservation of mechanical energy states that if an isolated system is subject only to conservative forces, t ...

. The generators then convert this energy into an

alternating current Alternating current (AC) is an electric current which periodically reverses direction and changes its magnitude continuously with time in contrast to direct current (DC) which flows only in one direction. Alternating current is the form in whic ...

, according to

Faraday's Law of Induction Faraday's law of induction (briefly, Faraday's law) is a basic law of electromagnetism predicting how a magnetic field will interact with an electric circuit to produce an electromotive force (emf)—a phenomenon known as electromagnetic inducti ...

, and create an electrical signal which must then coincide with the 50 Hz frequency used by the Spanish

power grid An electrical grid is an interconnected network for electricity delivery from producers to consumers. Electrical grids vary in size and can cover whole countries or continents. It consists of:Kaplan, S. M. (2009). Smart Grid. Electrical Power ...

. To reach this frequency, the turbines and in turn the generators must rotate at a speed of 214

rpm Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or with the notation min−1) is a unit of rotational speed or rotational frequency for rotating machines. Standards ISO 80000-3:2019 defines a unit of rotation as the dimensionl ...

. Finally, the

electric tension Voltage, also known as electric pressure, electric tension, or (electric) potential difference, is the difference in electric potential between two points. In a static electric field, it corresponds to the work needed per unit of charge to m ...

must be raised by the plant's

transformer A transformer is a passive component that transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another circuit, or multiple circuits. A varying current in any coil of the transformer produces a varying magnetic flux in the transformer' ...

s in order to reduce energy loss during travel along

power lines Electric power transmission is the bulk movement of electrical energy from a generating site, such as a power plant, to an electrical substation. The interconnected lines that facilitate this movement form a ''transmission network''. This is ...

. The power station was, like the dam, built with a view to aesthetics. The exterior features dressed stone blocks, while its rooftop turrets crowned by brick domes have a remarkably

historicist Historicism is an approach to explaining the existence of phenomena, especially social and cultural practices (including ideas and beliefs), by studying their history, that is, by studying the process by which they came about. The term is widely u ...

and

expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

character. Other details stand out as well, like the elephant head supporting a balcony, which was produced by sculptor . Presented in Paris at the Decorative Arts Exposition of 1921, the building won a gold medal.

References

External links

Endesa: Hydroelectric Station of El Carpio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Salto Dam Dams in Spain Dams completed in 1922 Hydroelectric power stations in Spain Buildings and structures in the Province of Córdoba (Spain) Neo-Mudéjar architecture in Spain Bien de Interés Cultural landmarks in the Province of Córdoba (Spain) Energy infrastructure completed in 1922 1922 establishments in Spain Barrages (dam) Run-of-the-river power stations