Rheinau power plant
| Rheinau power plant | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
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| location | ||
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| Coordinates , ( CH ) | 47 ° 38 '20 " N , 8 ° 36' 7" O ( 687 411 / 277123 ) | |
| country |
 Switzerland
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| place | Rheinau | |
| Waters | Rhine | |
| Kilometers of water | km 55.27 | |
| power plant | ||
| operator | Axpo AG , EnBW | |
| Start of planning | 1929 | |
| construction time | 1952 Start of construction | |
| Start of operation | 1957 | |
| technology | ||
| Bottleneck performance | 36.8 megawatts | |
| Average height of fall |
7.86 to 12.52 m | |
| Expansion flow | 400 m³ / s | |
| Turbines | 2 Kaplan turbines | |
| Others | ||
The Rheinau power plant is a run-of-river power plant (special form diversion power plant ) on the Rhine (55.27 km) near Rheinau . The river here forms the border between Germany and Switzerland .
power plant
The power plant uses the height difference of the Rhine loop near Rheinau and an impoundment of 5.9 meters, which acts up to the Rhine Falls , which is 6.6 kilometers upstream . While the natural course of the river flows around Rheinau in a loop, the water is diverted south of Rheinau at a weir system with four 25.5 meter wide openings, which are designed for a maximum flood of 1250 m³ / s. It runs through the power plant with its two Kaplan turbines and then two 370 meter long gravity tunnels, which can each drain off a water volume of 200 m³ / s. At the end of the tunnel, it returns to the Rhine. The difference in height is between 7.86 and 12.52 meters, depending on the water flow. The distance for this part of the water is shortened from around 4.4 kilometers to around 400 meters. The river forms the border between Germany and Switzerland here, but the power station building and the tunnels are all on Swiss territory. The operators of the power plant are in equal parts Axpo AG and EnBW .
An approximately 117 meter long weir bridge with a curved floor plan spans the 5.0 meter wide weir piers, which are arranged at a center distance of 30.5 meters. The 4.0 meter wide structure has solid steel wall girders arranged below on both sides and serves both for the operation and maintenance of the weir system and as a border crossing for hikers.
history
In 1929, the Republic of Baden and Switzerland signed a treaty to develop the Rhine from Basel to Lake Constance into a waterway . Part of these plans was a power station near Rheinau. In 1931, the license applications for the construction of the Rheinau power plant were published in the affected communities together with the project, and there were 46 objections. This was followed by additional drafts and in 1937 the consultation process. After the final project submission in the summer of 1942, Nordostschweizerische Kraftwerke AG , Aluminumwerke Chippis and Siemens-Schuckert Werke AG received the concession to build the power plant on December 22, 1944 . The concession came into force on February 1, 1948. After an amendment proposal approved by the government council of the Canton of Zurich on January 27, 1951, in which the machine house had been moved from the tunnel outlet to the tunnel inlet, the power plant was built from 1952 to 1957.
resistance
In the course of the implementation planning, considerable resistance against the building project arose in the early 1950s. This was directed against the damming of the Rhine between the Rhine Falls and the power station and the associated change in the landscape. 150,000 signatures and demonstrations could not prevent the construction. On December 26, 1951, the Federal Council confirmed that , in response to an interpellation by Alois Grendelmeier , it would hold on to the license granted on December 22, 1944.
On February 23, 1954, those opposed to the Rhine submitted a federal popular initiative to protect the Rhine Falls-Rheinau river landscape in Bern with almost 60,000 signatures . This provided for a supplement to the water law article of the Swiss Federal Constitution and an additional transitional provision to cancel the concession for the Rheinau power plant. In Switzerland, however, only 31.2 percent of the electorate, with a turnout of 51.9 percent, spoke in favor of protecting the electricity landscape. The Rheinaubund that emerged from the movement is still active today.
ecology
The course of the river between the discharge and re-introduction of the water only receives a fraction of the original amount of water. In order to be able to accumulate the remaining water to the level in front of the power plant construction, two auxiliary weirs were built. This happened among other things for reasons of landscape protection. For example, the monastery island Rheinau should be preserved as an island. If the water level dropped too much, the Chly Rhy arm north of the island would dry up. The first relief weir is north of Rheinau, the second just before the confluence of the power plant tunnel.
In order to improve the ecological value of the river loop, it is discussed to increase the minimum water volume of 5 m³ / s that gets into the loop and thus also the flow velocity. To support this, the two auxiliary weirs are to be partially or completely lowered. The latter would require additional measures in order to maintain the monastery island Rheinau as an island.
Web links
- www.axpo.ch ( Memento from January 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- http://www.swissinfo.ch
- Horst Johannes Tümmers: The Rhine A European river and its history . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-44823-2 , p. 90 . [1]
- Early documents and newspaper articles on the Rheinau power plant in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans Rudolf Stierli, Erwin Stucki, Paul Wüst: Before the construction of the N4: The Rhine crossings between Stein am Rhein and Eglisau . In: Rheinbrücke N4 , published by the National Road Office of the Canton of Schaffhausen, Meier Verlag Schaffhausen 1995, ISBN 3-85801-112-6 , p. 53
- ^ Consortium power plant Rheinau: The project of the power plant Rheinau . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung , Volume 69, August 1952, pp. 439–448
- ↑ DER SPIEGEL 7/1952
- ↑ Rudolf Steiner: The expansion of the High Rhine to a shipping route - the story of a failed major project . Inaugural dissertation, University of Mannheim, 2005, p. 385
- ↑ www.sjeweb.de ( Memento from February 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ http://www.rp.baden-wuerttemberg.de ( 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.
- ↑ http://www.Rheinaubund.ch
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The next bridge upstream: Rheinsteg Nohl |
Bridges over the Rhine |
The next bridge downstream: Bridge to the monastery island Rheinau (only crosses side arm) Rhine bridge Rheinau-Altenburg |