In the heart of the Alps
THE AGARO DAM, ITALY
Besides the Morasco Dam, in Italy, there's another small Atlantis right at the centre of the Alps. The small village of approximately 85 inhabitants is called Agaro. It was founded in the 13th century, in the heart of the Ossola Valley, on the mountain walls between the Antigorio Valley and the Devero Valley, in a hollow of glacial origin, in a faraway area of the Piedmont region, almost bordering Switzerland, at 1,561 metres above sea level. It used to be (or better still, it still is) a village, but since 1938 it is submerged by the waters of the dam that has the same name, while its inhabitants dispersed within the Antigorio Valley. Those few houses at 50 metres depth can be seen once in a while, when the water level reaches the minimum.
The dam has a height of 56.7 metres in its most deep point, and a crest that is 243 metres long. It can hold a maximum of 20 million cubic metres of water. The dam was commissioned by Edison, and built between 1935 and 1940 with a design made by engineers Claudio Marcello and Pietro Marinoni, using blocks of granite, cement mortar and concrete. It is crossed by three small tunnels, with two sets of drainage pipes. The heap of stones were taken locally, while part of the sand used for the cement mortar comes from the pebbly riverbed of the Toce River, transported with a 6-km-long cableway. Through a pressure tunnel that is 2,100 metres long and a jump of 487 metres, the dam supplies the Goglio powerhouse.
THE WORK AND THE TECHNIQUE
M LENGTH
M HEIGHT
M3 VOLUME
M3 RESERVOIR CAPACITY
Edison
Impresa Umberto Girola, now the Webuild Group
Construction works of the Agaro Dam in Piedmont were commissioned by to increase the amount of electricity in Piedmont, Lombardy and Liguria. They were assigned to Impresa Girola, which later became part of the current Webuild Group.
CULTURAL INSIGHTS
AGARO DAM
(Cinegiornale Luce, 1940)
The significant contribution of hydroelectric sources
In Italy, building dams to produce hydroelectric energy dates back to the end of the XIX century (the first hydroelectric plant, the Bertini one of Porto d'Adda, was inaugurated in 1895), where the Agaro Dam was inaugurated in 1940 and represents one of the main projects built in the Apline mountain range. The dam supplies the Goglio and Verampio plant, which is located in the Verbano-Cusio-Ossola province of Piedmont (which has one of the highest concentration of plants at a national level), which connects various plants of the area to the plains, with a power of 53 MW.
Hydroelectric energy was the main electric energy source in Italy up to the mid-60s, and has subsequently kept an annual production between 35,000 and 60,000 GWh, providing a solid energy supply base to Italy. Currently, Italy has an overall installed hydroelectric power of 28.38% of the Italian totalgreen energy sources and 15.31% of the electricity produced in Italy.
At the end of 2023, according to the GSE (Gestore dei Servizi Energetici) report, Italy had 4,848 hydroelectric plants, of which 1,083 in Piedmont, equalling to over a fifth of the Italian total, with a power of 2,845 MW, representing 14.76% of the Italian data in terms of power. The data collected at the end of 2023, shows moreover that the hydroelectric plants in Piedmont produced 5,346 GWh, equal to 21,45% of regional consumption. Since 2017, in fact, the energy production in Piedmont greatly exceeded the internal demand, also thanks to the significant contribution of hydroelectric sources.
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