Unitary power plant

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Wernerwerk ruins (Vogelsang power station) 2007
Wernerwerk (Vogelsang power station), aerial photo (2017)

Unit power plant is the name for a type of power plant that was built from 1943 onwards in the so-called thermal power emergency program in the German Reich .

The conversion of the economy of the Third Reich to the requirements of the war resulted in a considerably higher demand for electrical energy and the associated need to build new power plants. Armaments Minister Albert Speer , who had also held the function of General Inspector for Water and Energy (GIWE) since February 15, 1942 , therefore launched an "immediate thermal power program" at the beginning of 1942. The aim of this was to build a whole series of identical power plants. The head of the "Electricity Supply Economic Group" Wilhelm Zschintzsch , who initiated this program and was appointed by Albert Speer to head the "Immediate thermal power program", was primarily responsible for this. Due to this fact, the "immediate thermal power program" also became known as the " Zschintzsch program ".

The main requirement of this program was to be able to manufacture as many technical system components as possible for machine and boiler technology with a uniform design and size. Likewise, the construction of the boiler and machine houses should be designed in such a way that it is as material-saving as possible. The previous practice of constructively independent hall structures for boilers and machines was abandoned and a block construction was used, which divided the power station building into a heavy and a lightweight construction. In autumn 1942 a planning committee laid the necessary foundations for the construction of unitary power plants.

As the first prototype , construction of the "Kraftwerk K" of the Hamburgische Electricitäts-Werke began in 1942 .

The plan was therefore to build a total power plant capacity of 4500  MW . This was to be achieved by building 15 unit power plants, each with an output of 300 MW. Each of these power plants should receive four turbines of 75 MW each. But by the end of 1942, the number of power stations had to be drastically reduced because of the increasing scarcity of iron and steel , which was more and more needed for the armaments industry . The plan was now with eight power plants, which were initially only to be built as so-called half-plants. According to this, these would only have produced an output of 1200 MW, which corresponds to 26.6 percent of the original plan. Ultimately, in March 1943, the decision was made to build only five half-works. All of these power plants were built in the east of the empire . The fuel supply should be adapted to the respective locations. So a start was made on building three power plants based on lignite and two power plants based on hard coal .

Lignite power plants: construction started March / April 1943

Hard coal power plants ( Upper Silesian District ):

  • Walter power plant near Lagischa , construction started in May 1943
  • Wilhelm power plant near Jaworzno , construction began in September 1943

The builder of the brown coal power plants was the Märkische Elektrizitätswerk . The owner of the coal-fired power plants is Energieversorgung Oberschlesien AG, which was specially founded .

Forced laborers from nearby concentration camps or specially built labor camps were used almost exclusively to build the power plants . At least for the construction site of the Trattendorf power plant, however, the use of prisoners of war can also be proven. Inmates from the Auschwitz concentration camp were used on the construction sites of the Walter and Wilhelm power plants in Upper Silesia .

None of the power plants could be completed or even handed over to their destination. Construction at the Walter power plant was stopped on September 6, 1944 on the orders of Albert Speer. The first trial operation was started in the Wernerwerk at the end of January 1945, but work was then stopped on January 31, 1945 due to the approaching front .

After the end of the war, all the technical systems installed were removed from all power plants and brought to the Soviet Union as reparations . The Trattendorf power plants and the Berzdorf power plant (Hagenwerder power plant) were newly equipped and put into operation in the 1950s. The Wernerwerk (Vogelsang power station), now located directly on the border with Poland , was preserved in its structural fabric after the end of the war, but it was abandoned and not refurbished.

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