Conrod power plant
| Conrod power plant | ||
|---|---|---|
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| location | ||
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| Coordinates | 50 ° 36 '41 " N , 11 ° 38' 6" E | |
| country | Germany | |
| place | Ziegenrück | |
| Waters | Saale , Hohenwarte reservoir | |
| power plant | ||
| owner | private - viewings are not possible | |
| Start of planning | 1918 | |
| construction time | 1920-1922 | |
| Start of operation | 1922-1923 | |
| Shutdown | February 1, 1960 | |
| Listed since | technical monument | |
| technology | ||
| Average height of fall |
approx. 16 m | |
| Turbines | 3 Francis shaft turbines | |
| Generators | 3 synchronous generators | |
| Others | ||
The Conrod power plant is a decommissioned hydropower plant on the Hohenwarte reservoir near Ziegenrück in the Thuringian Slate Mountains , Thuringia . It is named after the Conrodberg, around which the Saale flows in a 5.5 km long loop and on whose west side the power plant is located. The facility is an industrial monument and, as the oldest original hydropower plant on the Saale, it is an important technical monument .
Construction of the power plant
The Conrod power plant was planned from 1918 and built from 1920–1922. The client was the Jena company Carl Zeiss ; the planning took place in his hydrotechnical office (for the planning and construction of dams and hydropower plants), which was founded in 1917 by the scientist and Zeiss manager Rudolf Straubel . The pressure tunnel breakthrough took place on May 8, 1921. Commissioning took place in two steps in 1922 and 1923.
Technical Equipment
From the inlet structure near Ziegenrück , a 640 m long and 20 m³ / s pressure tunnel led the water through the Conrodberg in an east-west direction to the power plant. It was built on the slope of the mountain in order to avoid the impoundment of the Hohenwarte Dam, which was already planned at the time, as far as possible.
In the power station building, the water flowed through an approx. 16 m deep shaft, at the bottom of which there were three Francis shaft turbines . The turbines were connected to the synchronous generators in the power station building via long vertical shafts.
Technical data of the machine sets
| Machine set | Manufacturer of the turbine | Nominal flow | Manufacturer of the generator | Generator voltage | power |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 and 2 | Escher Wyss AG | 7.7 m³ / s | Brown, Boveri & Cie. | 10 kV | 1320 hp |
| 3 | Escher Wyss AG | 4.7 m³ / s | Sachsenwerk | 815 hp |
The total output of the power plant was 3455 hp (2.5 MW). The electricity generated in the power plant was transported to Jena via a 50 kV overhead line , where it was mainly used to melt glass.
Decommissioning of the power plant
The completion of the Hohenwarte Dam in 1941 and the resulting backwater in the Saale increasingly restricted the operation of the power plant, contrary to the original plans. In 1946, the power plant stood idle for four months, in 1948 it had already been eight months. The situation worsened, so that the power plant was shut down for the first time for a longer period on September 24, 1956. On February 1, 1960, the power generation facilities were permanently shut down and then expanded.
It was later used as a vacation property by VEB Berggold, now the Berggold Chocolate Factory .
It has been privately owned since the 1990s. It cannot be visited.
literature
- Harald Mitteldorf: The history of the Saale dams (1890–1945). Vopelius-Verlag, Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-939718-03-1 , p. 69 ff. (4.2.1. Prof. Dr. Rudolf Straubel) and p. 116 f. (4.4.2. The Conrod power plant).
- Migration of peoples on the Saale. The inlet structure of the Conrod power plant attracts the curious to Ziegenrück. In: Ostthüringer Zeitung of September 10, 2013 ( online , accessed July 26, 2016)