Guri Dam

The Guri Dam is a large concrete gravity and embankment dam located on the Caroni River in Bolívar State, Venezuela. The site is also home to the Simón Bolívar Hydroelectric Plant, a key power station that is responsible for producing most of Venezuela’s electricity. Constructed in two stages starting in the 1960s, the Guri Dam is a critical component of Venezuela’s energy sector and economy. Standing 532 feet (162 meters) high and measuring 4,314 feet (1,315 meters) in length, the dam provides Venezuelan cities and towns with an estimated 50,000 gigawatt hours of energy every year. At the same time, the Guri Dam has also long been a source of controversy and concern. In the 2010s, Venezuela began to experience frequent power outages because of issues at the dam. While some government officials blamed these issues on droughts and political sabotage, experts concluded that technical problems at the dam were mostly the result of poor maintenance and aging infrastructure.

Background

The history and development of the Guri Dam is tied to Venezuela’s natural oil reserves and the government’s stance on how those reserves should be used. Through the first half of the twentieth century, after the discovery of oil in Venezuela, the country used a large portion of the petroleum it extracted from its oil reserves to meet its own energy needs. In the 1940s, the Venezuelan government came to the conclusion that their country’s long-term economic stability would depend primarily on its ability to export petroleum. This meant that it would be necessary to free up as much of Venezuela’s oil reserves for exportation as possible. In order to do so, it would also be necessary to find a different source of energy. To that end, the government turned its attention to hydroelectric energy generation, a shift with major implications for Venezuelan energy production.

The Venezuelan government began its shift to hydroelectric energy when it recruited an international consulting firm to put together a national electric power plan in 1949. The first and most important step in developing this plan was identifying the best place to build a hydroelectric dam. Studies conducted through the 1950s and into the 1960s revealed that the ideal location for such a dam was the Caroni River, Venezuela’s second largest river. The Caroni is a 430-mile (692-kilometer) waterway that flows across the Guiana Highlands and through much of Venezuela before emptying into the Orinoco River near Guyana City. Its headwaters emanate from Mount Roraima, which is a prominent peak in the Sierra Pacaraima mountain range. The Caroni is perhaps best known as the home of Angel Falls, which is the highest waterfall in the world at 3,212 feet (979 meters) tall. The Caroni’s considerable hydroelectric potential made it the ideal choice for the construction of a dam. Ultimately, officials decided to build the proposed dam about 62 miles (100 kilometers) upstream from the river’s outlet into the Orinoco at Necuima Canyon in the state of Bolívar. Construction officially got underway in 1963. Although work on the dam was originally meant to be carried out in three separate stages, demand for energy grew so quickly that the second and third stages of construction were undertaken simultaneously starting in 1976. In the end, the dam was finally completed in 1986.

Overview

The Guri Dam is recognized as one of the world’s largest power plants. Operated by a Venezuelan power company known as CVG Electrification del Caroni CA (Edelca), it has an installed capacity of 10,200 megawatts and provides Venezuela with about 50,000 gigawatt hours of energy each year. The hydroelectric power plant itself includes three high-voltage switchyards that run at 765, 400, and 230 kilovolts. These switchyards are situated in a breaker-and-half arrangement and have both triple and redundancy. This means that they have two sets of backups in case of emergency. When fully functional, the Guri Dam provides electricity to the whole of Venezuela. In fact, the Guri Dam and the nearby Macagua Dam are together said to generate about half of all the megawatts installed in Venezuela. Furthermore, the Guri Dam also provides electricity to parts of Brazil and Columbia and supplies the Caribbean island of Margarita via an underwater cable.

The Guri Dam underwent an extensive modernization program starting in 2007. As part of this program, which was aimed at extending the power plant’s operational life by an additional thirty years, several new turbines and generators were installed. By the early 2010s, the Guri Dam power plant was responsible for meeting about 73 percent of Venezuela’s energy requirements. About the same time, it started to become clear that the country’s dependence on the dam’s power plant was too great. This realization occurred when water levels at the dam fell dramatically in 2010 due to a prolonged drought. With an insufficient water supply, the power plant could not produce enough electricity to meet Venezuela’s energy needs. As a result, the country was plunged into a severe energy crisis. In order to combat the crisis, government officials were forced to impose rolling blackouts until water levels rose again.

Venezuela experienced another energy crisis when water levels at the dam plummeted once again in 2016. Citizens across the country were forced to endure more rolling blackouts and curtail their energy use as much as possible until the power plant could return to its normal operating capacity. In fact, that year’s national Easter holiday was extended several days so as to facilitate a week-long shutdown of public services and private businesses to conserve energy.

Guri Dam made headlines again in 2019 when the power plant abruptly shut down due to a failure at the pivotal San Gerónimo B substation. Much of Venezuela was subsequently plunged into darkness for a period of seventy-two hours while engineers worked to fix the problem. The extended blackout quickly spurred a temporary economic crisis and even lead to a number of deaths at Venezuelan hospitals that were left without power. This power failure occurred at a time in which many Venezuelans were already suffering due to poverty and food shortages, and the government was already in the throes of a presidential crisis. While some government officials claimed that the failure of the San Gerónimo B substation was the result of sabotage by foreign actors, experts pointed to corruption, poor management, and inadequate maintenance as the main causes of the problem.

Bibliography

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