The Macagua Dam, officially known as Antonio José de Sucre, is an embankment dam with concrete gravity sections on the

Caroní River The Caroní River is the second most important river of Venezuela, the second in flow, and one of the longest, from the Kukenan tepui through to its confluence with the Orinoco River. The name "Caroní" is applied starting from the confluence ...

in Ciudad Guayana, Bolívar State,

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

. It is upstream from the confluence of the Caroni and

Orinoco River The Orinoco () is one of the longest rivers in South America at . Its drainage basin, sometimes known as the Orinoquia, covers , with 76.3 percent of it in Venezuela and the remainder in Colombia. It is the fourth largest river in the wor ...

s, downstream of the

Guri Dam The Simón Bolívar Hydroelectric Plant, also Guri Dam ( es, Central Hidroeléctrica Simón Bolívar or ''Represa de Guri''), previously known as the Raúl Leoni Hydroelectric Plant, is a concrete gravity and embankment dam in Bolívar State, Ven ...

and downstream of the

Caruachi Dam The Caruachi Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the Caroní River in Bolivar state, Venezuela. It supports a hydroelectric power facility with a capacity. It is about downstream from the Guri Dam belonging to the Central Hidroeléctrica Simón B ...

. The dam's main purpose is hydroelectric power generation and it was later named after

Antonio José de Sucre Antonio José de Sucre y Alcalá (; 3 February 1795 – 4 June 1830), known as the "Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho" ( en, "Grand Marshal of Ayacucho"), was a Venezuelan independence leader who served as the president of Peru and as the second p ...

Dam

The Macagua Dam is a tall and long embankment dam with concrete gravity sections for each of the three different power stations. The dam supplies water to three power stations with a generation capacity of .

Power plants

Macagua I

Macagua I was constructed from 1956 to 1961 and it contains 6 x Francis turbine-generators for an installed capacity of . Currently, Macagua I is undergoing a refurbishment in order to increase the capacity of each generator from 64 MW to . The first generator was complete in 2010, the second is expected to be completed in 2011 and another each year thereafter.

Macagua II

Macagua II contains 12 x Francis turbine-generators for an installed capacity of . Macagua II began operation in 1996 and was inaugurated in January 1997.

Macagua III

Macagua III contains 2 x

Kaplan turbine The Kaplan turbine is a propeller-type water turbine which has adjustable blades. It was developed in 1913 by Austrian professor Viktor Kaplan, who combined automatically adjusted propeller blades with automatically adjusted wicket gates to ach ...

-generators for an installed capacity of . Macagua II began operation in 1996 and was inaugurated in January 1997.

External links

References

{{Caroní River dams Dams completed in 1961 Dams in Venezuela Embankment dams Buildings and structures in Bolívar (state) Buildings and structures in Ciudad Guayana