* Author: Noemí Valiente Sánchez *
In Dam Operation every single piece of data, every idea and every person is important. My name is Noemí and I’m in charge of auscultation monitoring of the dams located in the Tagus River Basin. At least once a day, every day, I remind myself how lucky I am to belong to this team, where all of us get along so well and are so committed to thoroughness in our work. That makes it easier to undertake the huge responsibility associated to inspecting and monitoring these structures.
In the Tagus River Basin, we have a total of seven major dams, seven “giants” that store water to be used in the turbines at our hydroelectric power plants. There are five dams on the River Tagus, one on the River Tiétar and one on the Alagón.
The José María de Oriol dam, located on the River Tagus, just a few metres upstream from the millennial bridge of Alcántara, stores a reservoir volume of some 3,162 hm³ at a height of 130 metres. Many tourists go to visit the bridge and end up taking more photos of the installation. Maybe it’s my passion for my profession that leads me to believe that a dam is the most beautiful structure that can be designed in civil engineering. I hope the bridge will forgive me for saying that!
Dams are subject to tremendous pressure, because of the water stored in the reservoir, and also to significant variations in temperature. That is why they need careful monitoring and attention. Our teams perform inspection rounds at the seven infrastructures located in the Tagus River Basin. Manuel and Juan Pedro and their state-of-the-art tablets record data on the instruments that are installed. These are sensors and devices that attain a level of precision to the nearest hundredth of a millimetre. Roberto, Mateo and Charo take measurements with high precision surveying devices. The fact is that dams move on the horizontal and vertical planes and these movements have to be controlled, as well as other things.
Not only that; to ensure monitoring on a 7/24/365 basis, a few clicks of the mouse in the office reveals data taken from hundreds of automatic sensors. This is thanks to our application called AGIL, which was custom-made for the Dam Operation department.
The data and the condition of the structure are reviewed every day, sometimes from the office and sometimes on site at the dams. We then draw up the analytical reports required by the standing regulations, which are submitted to the Hydrographic Confederation. If any anomalies are detected – even one figure that is out of the usual range – the entire team is alerted and detailed studies are carried out or any other measure that is needed to ensure the well-being of our seven “giants”.
Sometimes, in order to find an explanation for something unique in how the dam is behaving, we have to delve into the construction information. This consists of photos, plans and designs that leave no doubts about the ingenuity and technical skill of our colleagues that were involved in designing the structures and also of the huge amount of work that was required to build them at a time when resources were not as plentiful or advanced as they are today. There is something really majestic about a dam that anyone can feel just by looking at it. That feeling of awe is even stronger the more you know about them.
Major dams: defined in the standing regulations as dams measuring over 15 metres high or where the height is between 10 and 15 metres and the length of the crest is over 500 m, a reservoir capacity of over 1 hm³ or a drainage capacity of over 2000 m³/s.
