Aldeadávila Dam
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The Aldeadávila Dam is a Spanish
concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of aggregate bound together with a fluid cement that cures to a solid over time. It is the second-most-used substance (after water), the most–widely used building material, and the most-manufactur ...
arch-gravity dam, straddling the border between Spain and Portugal on the
Duero The Douro (, , , ; ; ) is the largest river of the Iberian Peninsula by discharge. It rises near Duruelo de la Sierra in the Spanish province of Soria, meanders briefly south, then flows generally west through the northern part of the Meseta ...
River (Douro in Portuguese).''Hydraulic Model Studies of Amaluza Dam Spillway.'' GR-25-76. Hydraulics Branch. Division of General Research. Engineering and Research Center. Bureau of Reclamation. United States Department of the Interior. December 1976, p. 9.
The nearest town is
Aldeadávila de la Ribera Aldeadávila de la Ribera is a village and municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional l ...
in the
Province of Salamanca Salamanca () is a province of western Spain, in the western part of the autonomous community of Castile and León (Castilla y León). It is bordered by the provinces of Ávila, Cáceres, Valladolid, and Zamora, and on the west by Portugal. It ...
, about to the east. The nearest Portuguese town is Fornos in
Bragança District Bragança District ( ; ) is a traditional political division of Portugal, in the northeast corner bordering on Spain (Castile and Leon and Galicia), covering 7.4% of the nation's continental landmass. the total resident population was 136,252, ...
, about to the southwest. The Portuguese side of the river around the dam site lies within the
Arribes del Duero Natural Park Arribes del Duero Natural Park is a protected area in western Spain, covering 106.105 ha in the autonomous community of Castile and León. In this area the river Duero forms the national boundary between Spain and Portugal, and the Portuguese side ...
.


Overview

In 1864, Portugal and Spain signed the "Treaty of Limits" (ratified in 1866), which established the present international boundaries of the two nations.Dominguez, Damian; Manser, Reto; and Ort, Christoph. ''No Problems on Río Duero (Spain) - Rio Douro (Portugal)?'' Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. 2004, pp. 9–10.
Accessed 2010-07-24; Martínez, José María Santafé. "The Spanish-Portuguese Transboundary Waters Agreements: Historic Perspective." ''Water International.'' 28:3 (September 2003).
A treaty on transboundary rivers, clarifying issues regarding the use of such rivers, was signed and affirmed in 1912. A treaty regulating the development of hydroelectric facilities on the Duero River was signed in 1927. The Aldeadávila Dam was built by Spain pursuant to these treaties, and was the final dam to be built by Spain on the section of river allotted to that country. The dam is high and its cost was estimated in 1962 at US$60,000,000 (about $443.5 million in 2010 inflated-adjusted dollars). It was one of a series of very high dams built in Europe in the two decades after World War II; these were designed with a downstream face inclined toward the upstream flow. This simplified the dam's design and construction (although it required more concrete to build), and more readily incorporated the
spillway A spillway is a structure used to provide the controlled release of water downstream from a dam or levee, typically into the riverbed of the dammed river itself. In the United Kingdom, they may be known as overflow channels. Spillways ensure tha ...
s into the dam face. The dam's face is nearly vertical. Design work on the dam began in 1956, and construction completed in 1963. The structure was built by the
Iberdrola Ingeniería y Construcción Iberdrola, S.A. () is a Spanish multinational electric utility company based in Bilbao, Spain. It has around 40,000 employees and serves around 30 million customers. Subsidiaries include ScottishPower (United Kingdom), Avangrid (Unite ...
construction firm. Pedro Martínez Artola was the design engineer.Rubió, Ignasi Solà-Morales; Capitel, Antón; and Rispa, Raúl. ''Birkhäuser Architectural Guide: Spain, 1920–1999.'' Basel: Birkhäuser, 1998, p. 126. The dam was built on high-quality
granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...
rock.Stagg, Kenneth G. and Zienkiewicz, O. ''Rock Mechanics in Engineering Practice.'' New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1968, p. 423. During construction,
grout Grout is a dense substance that flows like a liquid yet hardens upon application, often used to fill gaps or to function as reinforcement in existing structures. Grout is generally a mixture of water, cement, and sand, and is frequently employe ...
ing was used to fill cracks in the rock which ran parallel to the dam's foundation, and on the Portuguese bank where two fractures in the rock occurred. The underground power station and tunnels were excavated using a mining procedure known as large-chamber
stoping Stoping is the process of extracting the desired ore or other mineral from an underground mine, leaving behind an open space known as a stope. Stoping is used when the country rock is sufficiently strong not to collapse into the stope, althou ...
. The use of this technique for the Aldeadávila Dam is considered a textbook example. The turbine and generator hall, and the transformer hall were both cut from solid granite as well. The turbine and generator room is long, wide, and deep. The total volume of excavated material for all halls, rooms, and abutments was . The structure has eight overflow
gates Gates is the plural of gate, a point of entry to a space which is enclosed by walls. It may also refer to: People * Gates (surname), various people with the last name * Gates Brown (1939-2013), American Major League Baseball player * Gates McFadd ...
which channel water into four spillways. The spillways incorporate side piers on the upstream face to more correctly channel water over the dam so that each spillway discharges the same amount of water. The spillways release their water slightly above the actual bed of the river, creating a waterfall effect when they are fully open. A spillway tunnel carved from granite in the right bank of the river augments the spillways and provides for additional overflow. The total spillway capacity is half that of
Grand Coulee Dam Grand Coulee Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, built to produce hydroelectric power and provide irrigation water. Constructed between 1933 and 1942, Grand Coulee originally had two powerhous ...
in the United States. The Export-Import Bank of the United States provided $8.9 million (about $67.2 million in 2010 inflation-adjusted dollars) in credits in 1958 to
Iberduero Iberduero (IBEX 35: IBE) was a Spanish company, dedicated to the generation and distribution of electricity, founded in Bilbao in 1944, as a result of the merger of '' Hidroeléctrica Ibérica'' and '' Saltos del Duero''. Listed on the Madrid St ...
to enable it to purchase six 119.7 Megawatt (MW) turbines and other electrical equipment for the power generating station, all of which were supplied by American firms. The dam won Spain an international reputation as a builder of very large dams. The dam's eye-catching, "ski jump" style spillways are its most noted feature, and have been called "outstanding" by leading dam engineers. The canyon through which the Duero River flows is exceptionally deep and narrow, resulting in a reservoir that has a relatively small surface area for its immense size. In some ways, this limits use of the reservoir for recreational activities. However, the Aldeadávila Dam reservoir is a popular one for
boating Boating is the leisurely activity of travelling by boat, or the recreational use of a boat whether powerboats, sailboats, or man-powered vessels (such as rowing and paddle boats), focused on the travel itself, as well as sports activities, suc ...
.


Power plant

Until the
Alcántara Dam The Alcántara Dam, also known as the José María de Oriol Dam, is a buttress dam on the Tagus River near Alcántara in the province of Cáceres, Spain. It is named after the politician and captain of the Spanish electricity industry José María ...
, also in Spain, was built in 1969, the Aldeadávila Dam was the largest
hydroelectric power Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is Electricity generation, electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies 15% of the world's electricity, almost 4,210 TWh in 2023, which is more than all other Renewable energ ...
plant in Western Europe. As of 2018, and after some upgrades, it remains the largest in Spain, with a total output generating power of . The dam's original Aldeadávila I Power Station houses six
Francis turbine The Francis turbine is a type of water turbine. It is an inward-flow reaction turbine that combines radial and axial flow concepts. Francis turbines are the most common water turbine in use today, and can achieve over 95% efficiency. The pro ...
s for a total generating output of . In 1986, the Aldeadávila II Power Station extension was completed, adding two Francis pump-turbines, boosting generating capacity by . During periods when the demand for electricity is low (such as evenings, weekends, or during seasonal fluctuations), the dam's two pumped-storage generators can use its excess power-generating capacity to pump water back into the reservoir—enhancing reservoir capacity and storing water for periods when the demand for electricity is high. At the time it was constructed, the Aldeadávila Dam had the largest pumping station capacity in Europe. The dam has two diversion tunnels, each in length. Each tunnel has a high surge tank. The dam also contains more than of tunnels which divert water to the electrical generation turbines. There are six
penstock A penstock is a sluice or gate or intake structure that controls water flow, or an enclosed pipe that delivers water to hydro turbines and sewerage systems. The term is of Scots origin, and was inherited from the earlier technology of mill pond ...
tunnels, each about in diameter. The design of the penstocks and auxiliary spillways using these tunnels has proved to be an issue, however.
Cavitation Cavitation in fluid mechanics and engineering normally is the phenomenon in which the static pressure of a liquid reduces to below the liquid's vapor pressure, leading to the formation of small vapor-filled cavities in the liquid. When sub ...
problems have damaged these tunnels in the past.


In popular culture

A 30-minute documentary about the dam, ''La presa de Aldeadávila'', was produced by
Iberduero Iberduero (IBEX 35: IBE) was a Spanish company, dedicated to the generation and distribution of electricity, founded in Bilbao in 1944, as a result of the merger of '' Hidroeléctrica Ibérica'' and '' Saltos del Duero''. Listed on the Madrid St ...
(the power company that built the dam) in 1963. Several scenes in the 1965
David Lean Sir David Lean (25 March 190816 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor, widely considered one of the most important figures of Cinema of the United Kingdom, British cinema. He directed the large-scale epi ...
film '' Doctor Zhivago'' were filmed at the Aldeadávila Dam. The dam's famous spillways were opened for the filming, and are shown in the motion picture open at full force. Another scene depicts workers walking into one of the dam's enormous tunnels. The final scenes of
Antonio Mercero Antonio Mercero Juldain (7 March 1936 – 12 May 2018) was a Spanish director of the television series '' Verano azul'' and '' Farmacia de guardia''. He is best known as the director of a 1972 surrealist short horror film titled '' La cabina'', ...
's 1972 film, ''
La cabina () is a 1972 Spanish television film directed by Antonio Mercero, and written by himself and José Luis Garci, starring José Luis López Vázquez. It first aired on 13 December 1972 on . In the 35-minute film, a man becomes trapped in a telephon ...
'' (''The Telephone Box'') were also filmed inside the dam. '' Terminator: Dark Fate'' filmed a scene at the dam. ''
Fast X ''Fast X'' is a 2023 American action film directed by Louis Leterrier from a screenplay written by Dan Mazeau and Justin Lin, both of whom also co-wrote the story with Zach Dean. It is the sequel to ''F9 (film), F9'' (2021), the tenth main ins ...
'' was also filmed at the dam.


References


External links


Iberdrola
- Web site of the company which owns the dam
Búrdalo, Soledad. "Geometría tectónica." ''La Revista del Ministerio de Fomento.'' Abril 2007.
- Article from ''The Magazine of the Ministry of Public Works and the Economy'' about the construction of the dam.
Artola, Pedro Martínez. "El Salto de Aldeadávila." ''Revista de Obras Públicas.'' Diciembre 1962.
- Article by dam engineer Pedro Martínez Artola in the ''Journal of Public Works'' on the construction of the dam.
Olaguibel, L. "La Construccion de la Presa de Aldeadávila." ''Revista de Obras Públicas.'' Abril 1964.
- Article in the ''Journal of Public Works'' on the construction of the dam. {{DEFAULTSORT:Aldeadavila Dam Dams completed in 1962 Dams in Spain Dams in Portugal Arch–gravity dams Buildings and structures in the Province of Salamanca Buildings and structures in Bragança District Portugal–Spain border Reservoirs in Portugal Reservoirs in Castile and León 1962 establishments in Spain Dams on the Douro River