Rathausen power plant

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Rathausen power plant
Rathausen power plant with the Reuss and Reuss Canal, around 1920
Rathausen power plant with the Reuss and Reuss Canal, around 1920
location
Rathausen power plant (Canton of Lucerne)
Rathausen power plant
Coordinates 666 503  /  214 864 coordinates: 47 ° 4 '53 "  N , 8 ° 18' 52"  O ; CH1903:  666 503  /  two hundred fourteen thousand eight hundred sixty-four
country Switzerland
Waters Reuss
Data
Type Canal power plant
Primary energy Hydropower
power 2 MW
Start of operations 1896
turbine Tubular Kaplan turbine
Energy fed in per year 16 GWh
Website https://www.ckw.ch/
f2

The Rathausen power plant is a run-of-river power plant on the Reuss in the municipality of Emmen and Rathausen ( Ebikon ) in the canton of Lucerne . It belongs to Centralschweizerischen Kraftwerke AG (CKW).

prehistory

Klostermühle on the Reuss Canal around 1830: on the right a sawmill with its own water wheel, on the left in the foreground a stamping mill with its own water wheel, a grain mill in a large stone building with concealed water wheels
Reuss Weir and Reuss Canal, 1991

In 1266 the Cistercian convent in Rathausen received the right to use the Reuss with mills from Abbot Berchtold von Murbach . In 1536 the nuns received the concession from the Lucerne Council to rebuild the mill on the old Mühlenhofstatt, which was carried out in 1572. The mill was operated by a miller (handlehen, loan interest in 1720 200 guilders) and was part of the monastery's own operation.

The meandering Reuss prevented the construction of mills directly on the Reuss. The mills had to be placed on costly canals, which only cities or monasteries such as town hall and Hermetschwil could afford.

history

The Rathausen power plant was built by Eduard von Moos to replace the monastery mill. In 1894, Theodor Bell and Eduard von Moos founded the company Elektrizitätswerke Rathausen. After the Lucerne government approved the application for the use of Reuss hydropower at Rathausen, the EW was built from 1894 to 1896. The plant supplied electricity ( two-phase alternating current ) to the still small network for the first time in 1896, first of all to nearby industrial companies such as von Moos'schen Eisenwerke in Emmen. The Jonval turbine from Bell Kriens was in operation from 1896 to 1978 (300 hp, displacement 8 m³ / s, average gradient 4.6 m).

At the beginning of the 20th century, the demand for electricity had increased so much that it could no longer be met in the water scarce winter months. It had also steam engines to be installed. For the firing of the boiler system , 5000 t of coal were transported annually from the Lucerne train station to the power plant by horse-drawn vehicles .

In 1909 Fritz Ringwald joined Elektrizitätswerk Rathausen AG as director, which he expanded into what would later become CKW, but the company first had to be financially restructured. In the same year, the company took a stake in the Altdorf power station and financed the construction of the Arniberg power station near Amsteg . In 1913, the Schwyz power station was bought and in the same year the name of the company was changed from Elektrizitätswerk Rathausen AG to Centralschweizerische Kraftwerke AG (CKW).

Further municipal works and holdings in other power plants were taken over. The entire power grid of the canton of Lucerne was set up from Rathausen. The first large transmission line was built between Rathausen and Gösgen in 1924 . The eleven most important plants in German-speaking Switzerland were linked directly or indirectly via the switching and transformer stations in Gösgen and Rathausen.

With the establishment of the Mettlen substation in Inwil , Rathausen was connected to the Swiss network. The Lukmanier line , a three-pole 380 kV three-phase high-voltage line from Lavorgo over the Lukmanier Pass to Mettlen, was built in 1949.

From 1978 to 1980, the power plant from 1896 was replaced by a new central building with a bulb turbine. The output could be increased by 0.8 MW ( megawatts ) and the annual production by 6.8  GWh .

The CKW Group (2014) with around 1700 employees is the largest energy service provider in Central Switzerland and trains over 300 apprentices in various areas. The company headquarters is on an artificial island near Rathausen in the middle of the Reuss.

Today's production

The Rathausen power plant turbines (maximum absorption capacity) 45 m³ / s and supplies around 3500 households with basic energy . It has a total output of 2.2 MW and an annual production of around 16 GWh. The remaining water volume is 3 m³ / s.

guides

CKW organizes free guided tours for groups and schools in its supply area. Companies, clubs and families are welcome. In the “Stromwelt CKW”, electricity is made “tangible” in an exciting, entertaining and understandable way.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Kraftwerk Rathausen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rathausen: A place of silence - an introduction. In: Rathausen. A place tells its story. Foundation for Severely Handicapped Lucerne SSBL, 2017 .;
  2. ^ Josef Stöckli: 100 years of Elektra Ufhusen . In: Heimatkunde Wiggertal . tape 71 , 2014, p. 149 , doi : 10.5169 / seals-718817 .
  3. ↑ Ringwald, Fritz . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung . tape 75 , no. 43 , October 26, 1957, pp. 691-692 ( e-periodica.ch ).
  4. ^ Electricity works Altdorf AG: history. Retrieved December 8, 2018 .
  5. ^ History. Elektrizitätswerk Schwyz AG, accessed on December 8, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Our visitor center. CKW, accessed December 8, 2018 .