The Macagua Dam, officially known as Antonio José de Sucre, is an embankment dam

Embankment dam

An embankment dam is a massive artificial water barrier. It is typically created by the emplacement and compaction of a complex semi-plastic mound of various compositions of soil, sand, clay and/or rock. It has a semi-permanent waterproof natural covering for its surface, and a dense, waterproof...

 with concrete gravity sections on the Caroní River

Caroní River

The Caroni River is the second most important river of Venezuela, the second in flow, and one of the longest, 952 km from the Tepui Kuquenan, where she originates with the same name Kuquenan, up to its confluence with the River Orinoco to which basin she belongs...

 in Ciudad Guayana

Ciudad Guayana

Ciudad Guayana is a city in Bolívar State, Venezuela. It lies south of the Orinoco, where the river is joined by the Caroní River. The city, officially founded in 1961, is actually composed of the old town of San Félix at the east and the new town of Puerto Ordaz at the west, which lie either...

, Bolívar State

Bolívar (state)

Bolívar State , is one of the 23 states into which Venezuela is divided. The state capital city is Ciudad Bolívar. Bolívar State covers a total surface area of 238,000 km² and in June 30, 2010 had an estimated population of 1,620,359....

, Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

. It is 10 km (6 mi)upstream from the confluence of the Caroni and Orinoco Rivers, 81 km (50 mi) downstream of the Guri Dam

Guri Dam

The Guri Dam is a concrete gravity and embankment dam in Bolívar State, Venezuela on the Caroni River. Its official name is Central Hidroeléctrica Simón Bolívar...

 and 22 km (14 mi) downstream of the Caruachi Dam. The dam's main purpose is hydroelectric power generation and it was later named after Antonio José de Sucre

Antonio José de Sucre

Antonio José de Sucre y Alcalá , known as the "Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho" , was a Venezuelan independence leader. Sucre was one of Simón Bolívar's closest friends, generals and statesmen.-Ancestry:...

.

Dam and power plants

The Macagua Dam is a 69 m (226 ft) tall and 3537 m (11,604 ft) long embankment dam with concrete gravity sections for each of the three different power stations. Macagua I 8°18′02"N 62°39′52"W was constructed from 1956 to 1961 and it contains 6 x 64 MW Francis turbine

Francis turbine

The Francis turbine is a type of water turbine that was developed by James B. Francis in Lowell, Massachusetts. It is an inward-flow reaction turbine that combines radial and axial flow concepts....

-generators for an installed capacity of 384 MW. Macagua II 8°18′14"N 62°40′04"W contains 12 x 216 MW Francis turbine-generators for an installed capacity of 2,592. Finally, Macagua III 8°18′09"N 62°40′46"W contains 2 x 88 MW Kaplan turbine

Kaplan turbine

The Kaplan turbine is a propeller-type water turbine which has adjustable blades. It was developed in 1913 by the Austrian professor Viktor Kaplan, who combined automatically adjusted propeller blades with automatically adjusted wicket gates to achieve efficiency over a wide range of flow and...

-generators for an installed capacity of 176 MW. All together, the generation capacity is 3,152 MW. Both Macagua II and III were operational in 1996 and inaugurated in January 1997. Currently, Macagua I is undergoing a refurbishment in order to increase the capacity of each generator from 64 MW to 79.5. The first generator was complete in 2010, the second is expected to be completed in 2011 and another each year thereafter.