Barrage de Verbois

Barrage de Verbois
Dam wall with the power plant (left)
location
Coordinates	491.15 thousand  /  116700 coordinates: 46 ° 11 '35 "  N , 6 ° 1' 43"  O ; CH1903:  491.15 thousand  /  116700
country	Switzerland
place	Aire-la-Ville , Russian
Waters	Rhone
Height upstream	371  m
power plant
owner	Services Industriels de Genève (SIG)
construction time	1938-1943
Start of operation	1943
technology
Bottleneck performance	98.316 megawatts
Average height of fall	21.6 m
Expansion flow	321 m³ / s
Standard work capacity	(466 + 1.8) million kWh / year
Turbines	4 Kaplan turbines 1 Francis turbine (small hydropower plant)
Others

Dammed up Rhone with dam

The Barrage de Verbois is a barrage and a hydropower plant on the Rhone in Geneva .

The dam is on the border between the municipalities of Aire-la-Ville and Russin . The power station and the switchgear are on the right bank of the Rhone, in the municipality of Russin. The plant belongs to the public Services Industriels de Genève (SIG).

The facility, which began in 1938, was completed in 1943. It replaced the Usine de Chèvres, a little upstream . This run-of-river power plant had an installed capacity of 13 MW. It started operating in 1896 and worked until 1943 when it was demolished before being flooded by the new reservoir.

Barrage

The gravity dam is 34 m high, 340 m long and has a volume of 131,000 m³. The reservoir has a volume of 12 million m³ and an area of ​​1.3 km² and a length of 11.4 km. The canton road 81, which connects the villages Aire-la-Ville and Russin, leads over the dam.

The largest fish ladder in Switzerland with 107 tanks has been on the left bank since January 2000 . The Cheneviers waste incineration plant is located on the left bank above the dam . This is partially supplied by ships that sail on the dammed Rhone.

Run-of-river power plant

Four Kaplan turbines with a total output of 98 MW are installed in the right half of the dam . The maximum height difference is 21.6 m and the average flow rate is 321 m³ / s. The power plant has an average annual production of 466 GWh. During the course of the day, the output is adapted to the demand for electricity by controlling the rhone outflow with the Barrage du Seujet located above .

On February 8, 1996, Kraftwerk was damaged by a fire in the machine hall. The four turbines were put back into operation one after the other between September 1997 and autumn 1998.

At the lower end of the fish ladder a micro power plant is installed with a Francis turbine with an output of 316 kW, which in 2004 produced 1.8 GWh.

The Verbois gas-insulated switchgear is located on the right bank below the dam . This is connected to France and the rest of Switzerland with 400 kV and 230 kV high-voltage lines .

Two solar power plants are installed on the site: since August 2001 SIG solar 1 on the dam with 7.6 kW, and since July 2005 next to the switchgear SIG solar 3 with 1 MW.

Web links

Commons : Verbois dam  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Brief description on the SIG website (French)
• Technical data of the barrage at www.swissdams.ch
• Technical data and cross-sections at www.swissdams.ch (PDF, French; 243 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ^ René Sauvin: Les centrales hydro-electriques sur le Rhône genevois. In: IN.KU-Bulletin 21, April 1997 (French; PDF file; 150 kB)
2. ↑ Tribune de Genève, September 24, 1997  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (French)  
3. ^ Ouvrage Micro-centrale de Verbois - final report Project report by Patrick Quercia and Jean-Louis Martinez, 2005. (French)