Railway power converter plant in Basel Badischer Bahnhof

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The converter plant in 1964

The traction current converter plant in Basel Badischer Bahnhof was a traction current converter plant at the Badischer Bahnhof in Basel , Switzerland , which was used to supply traction power to the Wehra and Wiesental Railway . The first commercially used traction current converter in the world was located in the system. The plant was shut down after the Haltingen substation went into operation .

history

The plant went into operation in 1913 with a converter . A buffer battery covered the peak load and a turbo generator served as a reserve in the event of a failure of the 50 Hz national grid. In 1936, a converter was also put into operation, which was installed in the existing building. In the course of this construction project, the turbo generator and the buffer battery were taken out of service, dismantled and scrapped. Next was the frequency of the traction current from 15 Hz to 16 2 / 3  Hz increased. After commissioning the converter, the existing converter, the speed of which was increased from 300 min −1 to 500 min −1 through a conversion , was declared a reserve device. The converter worked more economically than the converter and also worked fairly reliably, so that the converter was rarely used.

In 1950, the electrification of Basel's suburban lines began . After this work was completed in 1952, the Basel Badischer Bahnhof traction power converter plant was fully utilized. In 1953 the electrification of the Rhine Valley route Mannheim – Basel began and after the commissioning of the Haltingen substation, which was supplied with 110 kV via the traction current network , the traction current converter plant in Basel Badischer Bahnhof was shut down. Since then, the Wehra and Wiesentalbahn have been supplied with electricity via Haltingen. All systems of the transformer plant in Basel Badischer Bahnhof were scrapped. The building was demolished at the end of the 1970s to make room for the construction of the Kleinhüningen - Weil am Rhein motorway border crossing .

technology

Converter from 1913

The system was used to convert the three-phase alternating current generated by the Rheinkraftwerk Wyhlen , which was fed into the substation with a voltage of 6.8  kV , into the single-phase alternating current with a voltage of 15 kV and a frequency of 15  Hz , which is necessary for rail operation . For this purpose, the plant was equipped with a transformer replacement with an output of just over 1  MW (1400  PS ). The backup battery to cover peak loads had a capacity of 2.2  kAh for a one-hour discharge and 5 kAh for a short-term discharge. The buffering was regulated by pirani machines. These machines, developed by Marcello Pirani , were connected in series with the battery and regulated the charging and discharging of the battery. In the beginning, the activation was done by the operating personnel, later a Thoma high- speed regulator that works with oil pressure took over this task. The turbo generator with an output of 1.25 MW served as a reserve in the event of power failures in the national grid.

Inverter from 1936

The converter, which was commissioned in 1936, had an output of 5.4  MVA and used mercury vapor rectifiers as valves. The energy was drawn from the Rheinfelden power station via a 45 kV three-phase line . The line consisted of an overhead line with a 95 mm² cross section per conductor and an underground cable with a 150 mm² cross section per conductor. A second 45 kV line was built from Grenzach for the emergency supply. The switchgear for the supply lines was installed on the roof of the existing switchgear.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adolf Thomälen: Short textbook of electrical engineering . Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-662-42409-4 , pp. 172 ( google.ch [accessed January 19, 2020]).
  2. ^ Johann Waltjen: Design and construction of switchgears for three-phase power plants . Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-642-92379-1 , pp. 80 ( google.ch [accessed on January 19, 2020]).

Coordinates: 47 ° 34 '18.2 "  N , 7 ° 36' 12.5"  E ; CH1903:  612405  /  269 014