A consortium of ELC Electroconsult of Italy and IECO of the United States won the competition for the viability studies and construction project, and design studies began in February 1971. The article gives conflicting construction starts of January 1971 in the infobox and January 1975 in the text. The dam opened on May 5, 1984. It is described as four dams joined together, with earth-fill, rock-fill, concrete buttress and concrete wing sections.
The height is 643 feet (196 m). The length is 25,981 feet (7,919 m) in the infobox and 23,737 feet (7,235 m) in the text. The powerhouse has 20 Francis turbines of 700 MW each, ten at 50 Hz for Paraguay and ten at 60 Hz for Brazil, for 14 GW.
The reservoir covers 520 square miles (1,350 km²). The cost is given as 19.6 billion US dollars. In 1994 the American Society of Civil Engineers named the dam one of the seven modern Wonders of the World.
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