Cerros-Colorados complex, photographed from the space shuttle. Los Barreales is up and light blue; Mari Menuco is the smaller and darker one. The river flows from the top left to the bottom right.
Cerros Colorados is a complex of dams and hydropower plants on the Lower Neuquén River in the Argentine province of Neuquén in the Comahue region in northwestern Patagonia . Cerros Colorados is itself part of a larger network of dams known as the El Chocón-Cerros-Colorados Complex, which also includes the El Chocón dam and its waterworks. These are further up the Limay River .
Cerros Colorados consists of four barriers (Portezuelo Grande, Loma de la Lata, Planicie Banderita and El Chañar) and uses two deep natural depressions called "Los Barreales" and "Mari Menuco". These two together are the reservoirs of Cerros Colorados; they lie next to the natural course of the Neuquén.
The Neuquén is first dammed with the Portezuelo Grande lock . The water is diverted to Los Barreales Lake. From this, water can be taken for irrigation as well as for drinking and service water supply. The water flows through the "Loma de la Lata" dam to the "Mari Menuco" reservoir. The water level in the Mari Menuco reservoir is 69 m higher at its outlet at "Planicie Banderita" than the river that the water reaches there again. This difference in height is used in the Planicie-Banderita hydropower plant to generate electricity. This has two vertical Francis turbines with Siemens generators with a capacity of 243 MW each (other figures are also given) and generates 1512 GWh of electricity annually, which is fed into the national electricity grid via 500 kV lines.
Another small dam called "El Chañar" is located about 10 km below Planicie Banderita in order to regulate the Neuquén there again.
Construction work began in 1969. The first turbine was put into operation in 1978. On October 31, 1980, the complex was officially put into operation. In 1993 it was privatized and given the concession to the company Hidroeléctrica Cerros Colorados SA. In 2000, Cerros Colorados was acquired by Duke Energy together with the Alto Valle thermal power station .
Dates of the Los Barreales reservoir
The lake surface is 421 meters above sea level.
The water level can fluctuate by 7 m.
The surface is 413.1 square kilometers (about 70 percent of Lake Geneva )
The mean depth is 67 m.
The maximum depth is 120 m.
The stored water volume is 27.7 billion m³ (according to other sources 25.1 or 28.1 billion m³).
The catchment area of the Río Neuquén at the Portezuelo Grande dam is about 20,000 km².
The Río Neuquén has an average discharge of 360 m³ / s here.
According to various sources, both reservoirs together should have a storage space of 43 or even 48 billion m³. - The barriers are dams, some combined with gravity dams .
![Building Portezuelo Grande [1] [2] (Neuquén)](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Argentina_Neuqu%C3%A9n_location_map.svg)
![Portezuelo Grande building [1] [2]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Blue_pog.svg/8px-Blue_pog.svg.png){kind=small}
