Hydraulic Engineering
David Judiel Altamirano Del Ángel
Hydroelectric Power Plant in Mexico
Jesús Emiliano Osorio de León
Adolfo López Mateos Dam
The Adolfo López Mateos Dam, also known as Humaya Dam, is
a dam located on the Humaya River1 in the municipality of
Badiraguato, Sinaloa. It was put into operation on September 9,
1963, and has a hydroelectric power plant capable of generating
90 megawatts of electric power, which began operations on
November 26, 1976,2 its reservoir is approximately 3,087 million
cubic meters of water.
The Adolfo López Mateos dam is the largest in the state of
Sinaloa and the 9th largest in Mexico.
Aguamilpa Dam
Aguamilpa Dam, more formally called Aguamilpa Solidaridad
Dam, is a hydroelectric power plant located on the course of the
Grande de Santiago River in the municipality of Tepic, Nayarit,
was inaugurated on July 21, 1994 by the then president of Mexico
Lic. Carlos Salinas de Gortari and was put into commercial
operation on September 15, 1994. It has a capacity to generate
960 megawatts of electrical energy,2 its reservoir has an
approximate capacity to hold 5,540 cubic hectometers of water,
is 186 meters high and 660 meters long; less than 80 km upstream
is El Cajón Dam.
La Amistad Dam
La Amistad Dam is a binational dam located on the Río Bravo
between the borders of Mexico, Coahuila, and the United States,
Texas, and was inaugurated in 1969 by Presidents Richard Nixon
and Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Its hydroelectric plant has a capacity to
generate 66 megawatts of electrical energy,12 which is distributed
equally to both nations, its reservoir is approximately 3,887 cubic
hectometers,3 which is called La Amistad Reservoir, and is operated
by the International Boundary and Water Commission.
El Caracol Dam
El Caracol Dam, more formally called Ingeniero Carlos Ramirez
Ulloa Dam,2 is a dam located on the bed of the Balsas River in
the municipality of Apaxtla, Guerrero, it was put into operation
on December 16, 1986, it has a hydroelectric power plant with a
capacity to generate 600 megawatts of electricity,1 its reservoir
has a capacity to hold 1,414 cubic hectometers of fresh water, its
curtain measures 126 m, approximately 200 km downstream
begins the Infiernillo Dam reservoir.
Malpaso hydroelectric power plant
This was built between 1958 and 1966. The Grijalva River
Commission was in charge of the project. It is important to make
a brief clarification on this last fact: since the 1940s, the federal
government, through the Secretariat of Hydraulic Resources,
promoted vast agricultural, industrial and electrical development
programs through commissions that covered entire hydrographic
basins. For this purpose, the administration of Miguel Alemán
took as a model the successful Tennessee Valley Authority of the
United States.6 The Tennessee... was created on May 18, 1933
within the New Deal program of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Its logistical scheme, whose essential objective was the
generation of hydroelectric power, served as inspiration for the
Mexican government when it created the Grijalva River
Commission, as a dependency of the then Secretariat of
Agriculture and Hydraulic Resources, by means of the
presidential agreement of June 27, 1951. The federal government
also founded commissions for the Papaloapan (1947),
Tepalcatepec (1947) and Rio Fuerte (1951) river basins.
The Netzahualcóyotl dam has been used not only to generate
hydroelectric power, but also to control the flooding of the
Grijalva and one of its main tributaries, the La Venta river. These
used to cause serious flooding in the Chontalpa region and in the
city of Villahermosa, Tabasco. The plant's hydroelectric power
plant, with a generating capacity of 1080 MW, was built and
installed by the CFE.7 The site selected for the curtain is the site
called "Raudales de Malpaso". The artificial lake flooded very
fertile but sparsely inhabited valleys. The town that was flooded
was Quechula, whose church emerged from the waters in 2003
when the level of the reservoir decreased due to a drought.
Among the objectives motivating the construction of this dam
were: to avoid major disasters in Chontalpa due to flooding, to
produce about 2,754 million kW annually, to irrigate 350,000 ha
of agricultural land in Chontalpa and to maintain navigation on
the Grijalva.8 Its reservoir has a storage capacity of 9,605 hm³
and covers 110 km².9
This power plant has 6 Francis type generating units, each one of
them generates 180 MW with a water expense of 220 m³ and two
of them have an arrangement to pass to synchronous condensers
that are the ones that absorb reagents in the transmission lines.
this power plant is one of the pilots that regulate the frequency of
the national electric system. and for large avenues it has water
evacuation systems that were modernized in 2015. it is one of the
most striking power plants in the state of Chiapas.
La Yesca
It is located in the Sierra Madre Occidental, on the Santiago River,
112 km northwest of the city of Guadalajara, on the limits of the
states of Jalisco and Nayarit.
La Yesca, which has a generating capacity of 750 megawatts (MW),
which is equivalent to 50% of the electricity demand of the
metropolitan area of the city of Guadalajara or to simultaneously
turn on 25 million saving light bulbs of 30 watts.
The storage capacity of your glass is 2,392 million cubic meters. The
exceedance work or spillway is made up of 6 radial gates 12 meters
wide by 22 meters high, with an evacuation capacity of a maximum
flow of 15,110 cubic meters per second, which is equivalent to 250
times the supply of drinking water for the City of Mexico and its
metropolitan area.
