Ruppoldingen power plant

Ruppoldingen power plant
Underwater side of the power plant in 2012
location
Coordinates	633190  /  240262
country	Switzerland  Solothurn , Aargau
place	Ruppoldingen , Boningen , Olten , Rothrist
Waters	Aare
Height upstream	398  m above sea level M.
power plant
owner	Alpiq
Start of planning	1890s
construction time	Diversion power station : 1894–1896 Reconstruction and expansion: 1924–1925
Start of operation	Diversion power plant : 1896 Pumped storage power plant : 1903 Extension: 1925 Replacement construction: 2000
Shutdown	Pumped storage power plant: 1960
technology
Bottleneck performance	21.5 megawatts
Expansion flow	475 m³ / s
Standard work capacity	115 million kWh / year
Turbines	2 × geared shaft turbine output: 11.5 MW
Generators	2 × 10.75 MW
Others
Website	www.alpiq.com
was standing	2020

The Ruppoldingen power plant is a run-of-river power plant on the Aare near Rothrist that went into operation in 1896 and is one of the oldest large-scale power plants in Europe. Alpiq Holding later emerged from the operating company Elektrizitätswerk Olten-Aarburg AG (EWOA) . The power plant was renewed in 1925 and was supplemented with a pumped storage power plant from 1906 to 1960 . A river power plant commissioned in 2000 replaced the outdated canal power plant from 1896.

First power plant near Ruppoldingen

Old power plant

The first small power plants were built in the communities of Olten in the canton of Solothurn and Aarburg in the canton of Aargau for private and commercial use. The von Roll foundry in Olten had electric lighting in 1887. The Swiss Central Railway set up a power supply in Olten station . Around 1890, initiative committees were formed in both Olten and Aarburg that wanted to build a large hydropower plant on the Aare. Hans Lüscher (? –1909), Mayor of Aarburg and Grand Councilor, the factory owner Adolf Zimmerli (1848–1938), National Councilor Arnold Künzli and others submitted a building application to the Solothurn cantonal authorities in 1890, the Oltener Constantin von Arx (1847–1916), Casimir von Arx (1852-1931), Louis Giroud (1840-1919) and other partners wrote a competing project at the same time. The cantonal authorities did not agree to the project because of inadequate project bases.

In 1892 the two groups merged to form a joint company, whose license applications for a power plant at Hof Ruppoldingen in the municipality of Olten were approved on October 24, 1894 by the government council of the canton of Solothurn and on October 30, 1894 by the government council of the canton Aargau. The sovereign shares of the two cantons are 50% each.

On this basis, the company Elektrizitätswerk Olten-Aarburg AG (EWOA) was founded on October 31, 1894 in the Hotel Schweizerhof in Olten , which later became Atel Holding , which later became Alpiq Holding . The power plant was financed by the electrical engineering company Brown, Boveri & Cie. (BBC) from Baden .

The electricity company placed the construction contract for the power station ^{▼ from} the construction company Fischer & Schmuziger in Zurich and in 1895 ordered the Jonval turbines for the low-pressure power station from Bell Maschinenfabrik in Kriens and the electromechanical systems from BBC.

Built on the left bank of the river power station owned a large as a flap weir ^▼ engineered barrier construction in the Aare, which was 114 meters wide and about 2.5 m Aare dammed above the normal water level. The four-kilometer-long impoundment reached the municipal boundary between Fulenbach and Boningen, ^▼ the lower concession limit was at the confluence of the Wigger . ^▼ The diversion structure diverted up to 150 m³ of Aare water per second into the 760 m long headwater channel, which was 50 m wide and three meters deep. The usable net gradient was 1.7 to 3.6 meters, depending on the water level of the Aare.

Initially, the supply network only extended to the nearby towns of Aarburg and Olten. It was built by Hermann Kummler's electricity company in Aarau and put into operation on November 14, 1896. At the beginning the power station only worked with six turbines, two more were added in 1897 and 1898.

In 1913 there were ten Jonval turbines in the machine house, each of which delivered 300 hp at 28.5 revolutions per minute. Four turbines individually drove a generator, six turbines in pairs via bevel gears a common generator with double the power, so that a total of seven generators were set up. Similar to the Aarau power plant , the generators generated two-phase alternating current with a frequency of 40 Hz and a voltage between 5000 and 5300 volts.

Remodeling in 1925

After the construction of the large Gösgen power station , the electricity company had the machines at the Ruppoldingen power station renewed in 1925, while at the same time the production of two-phase alternating current with a frequency of 40 Hz was switched to the later common three-phase alternating current with a frequency of 50 Hz. The nine new propeller turbines ( Kaplan turbines with non-adjustable blades ) were supplied by the Ateliers des Charmilles SA (ACMV) machine factory in Geneva, while the generators came from BBC. Each turbine had an output of 740 kW (1000 hp) at 94 revolutions per minute. They were directly connected to the generators without a gearbox, which generated an output voltage of 7.7 to 8.4 kV. The total output of the power plant after the conversion was 5.5 MW, the annual production 39.6 million kWh.

During the construction of the new Ruppoldingen power plant, the old plant was shut down and demolished around 1999. The machine house, which is valuable in terms of technology and architecture, and the Rheinfelden power station, which was built at the same time, were not preserved despite recommendations in the environmental impact report.

High pressure power plant near Ruppoldingen

Map excerpt from 1931. The machine house on the canal, pressure line and upper basin of the high-pressure power plant can be seen.

After just a few years, the hydropower plant was temporarily unable to meet the electricity requirements in the closed regional supply network. A network with other power plants was not yet possible because of the isolated distribution of the power plants.

With a concession from the canton of Solothurn on June 30, 1903, the Olten-Aarburg electricity company built a small high-pressure power plant as a pumped storage power plant next to the Ruppoldingen upper water canal . The storage basin ^▼ , located 325 m above the diversion canal on the Born , had a capacity of 12,000 cubic meters . A ternary machine set was installed in the machine house ^▼ , which consisted of a four-stage high-pressure centrifugal pump from Sulzer , a turbine from Piccard, Pictet & Co. from Geneva, and a motor generator from BBC. He promoted in off-peak periods with excess energy from the low-pressure power plant water from the River Aare in the high-altitude storage tanks and produced so that at peak demand additional energy.

The early high-pressure power plant caused a sensation in specialist circles and received many visits from electrical engineers from several countries.

With new machines from 1926, the Ruppoldingen-Born high-pressure plant ran until 1960 when the system was demolished. The course of the former pressure line is now followed by a very long staircase, known as Tusigerstägli , which is also used for sports events .

Thermal power plant

From 1905 to 1909, due to the high energy demand, the power station also built a thermal power station with two boiler systems and BBC machines in addition to the high-pressure system. At the beginning of the First World War in 1914, the company shut down the steam plant; In 1924 it had the facilities of the thermal power station removed. The power plant's new switchgear was installed in the vacant rooms.

New power plant in Ruppoldingen

In 1996 Atel Holding decided to build a new power plant to replace the older plant near Ruppoldingen on the basis of new concessions from the Cantons of Solothurn and Aargau. The new Ruppoldingen ^{▼ run-of-} river power plant is located around one kilometer above the old canal power plant, in the municipality of Boningen . The building is in the Aare and no longer needs a supply duct. The two bulb turbines with a diameter of 5.9 meters have an output of 23 megawatts and have generated an average of 115 gigawatt hours of electricity annually since they went into operation in 2000.

See also

• List of hydropower plants in Switzerland

Web links

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

literature

• Hans Brunner: 75 years of electricity supply in Olten , Olten 1991.
• Peter Gartmann: Ten times ten Atel years. Festschrift for the 100th anniversary of Aare-Tessin Ltd. for electricity , Atel, Olten 1994.
• Hugo Dietschi: History of the electricity works Olten-Aarburg AG (1894-1936). Ruppoldingen and Gösgen power plants , Olten 1945.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Olten: Aare. Ruppoldingen and Gösgen power plants. In: Inventory of the newer Swiss architecture (INSA) . tape 7 , 2000, pp. 336–337 ( e-periodica.ch ).
2. ^ Sarah Brian Scherer: Arnold Künzli. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . November 6, 2008 , accessed July 6, 2019 .
3. ↑ ^{a b} Statistics of hydropower plants in Switzerland . January 1, 1973, p. 94-95 ( admin.ch ).
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Statistics of hydropower plants in Switzerland . January 1, 1914, p. 170–171 ( admin.ch ).
5. ↑ ^{a b} Conversion of the Ruppoldingen turbine plant . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung . tape 86 , 1925, pp. 25-26 , doi : 10.5169 / SEALS-40153 .
6. ^ W. Wyssling: The technical development of hydro-electrical systems in Switzerland as presented by the ETH at the International Exhibition in Basel 1926 . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung . tape 89 , no. 4 , 1927, doi : 10.5169 / SEALS-41641 .
7. ^ Ivo Pfister, RP Bärtschi, new Ruppoldingen power plant. Environmental Impact Report. Expert opinion C.12 Monument protection , Winterthur 1990
8. ↑ Hydropower from the Aare. Renewable energy from the region. Power plant brochure. Alpiq, 2014 . 

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