Santa Radegonda power plant
| Centrale elettrica di Santa Radegonda | |||
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| location | |||
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| Coordinates | 45 ° 27 '55 " N , 9 ° 11' 33" E | ||
| country | Italy | ||
| place | Milan | ||
| Data | |||
| Type | coal-fired power station | ||
| Primary energy | coal | ||
| power | approx. 525 kW | ||
| operator | Comitato per l'Applicazione dell'Elettricità "Sistema Edison" in Italia , predecessor of Edison SpA | ||
| Start of operations | June 28, 1883 | ||
| Shutdown | 1926 | ||
The Santa Radegonda power plant , in Italian Centrale elettrica di Santa Radegonda or Centrale elettrica di via Santa Radegonda , in Milan was the first thermal power plant in continental Europe to transfer the generated electrical energy to an electrical distribution network and sell it to several customers.
history
The construction of the power plant goes back to the initiative of Giuseppe Colombo . On a study trip to the USA , he personally examined Thomas Edison's inventions and was then able to convince the Milan city council to build a power station. The company for the construction and operation of the power station was called in Italian Comitato per l'Applicazione dell'Elettricità "Sistema Edison" in Italy - it later became the Italian branch of the Edison company .
The power plant was built about 50 m from Milan Cathedral on a small floor plan between Via Santa Radegonda and Via Agnello. On the site stood a monastery consecrated to Saint Radegundis in the 9th century , which was dissolved in 1782 as a result of the Josephine church reform. The Santa Radegonda Theater was opened in the former converted monastery complex in 1803, but had to close its doors again in the early 1880s. The building was then acquired by the company and demolished in 1882.
The plant was commissioned on June 28, 1883, first with three, then with four Edison-type electric generators, but had to be expanded to six generators in the second half of the year. The additional power was required to illuminate the Scala in Milan , an important step forward in fire protection for the theater after the devastating fire in the Ringtheater in Vienna .
Two years later the power plant was too small again. In addition to the six existing Edison generators, eight Thomson-Houston generators had to be installed, which were used solely for the carbon arc lamps for city lighting .
In 1898 were in an adjoining building in Via Agnello converters installed in order to the new hydroelectric power plant Paderno coming alternating current into direct current to convert; Batteries were also installed in the Santa Radegonda premises to cover peak loads. Together with converters, they were able to supply both the tram network and the existing direct current network in the city center and were thus able to prevent the Porta Volta thermal power station from being switched on too frequently .
The power plant was demolished in 1926 and the Odeon cinema was built in its place. A memorial plaque was unveiled in 1983 to mark the centenary of the power plant's operation.
technology
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In the building of the power station were on the first floor five coal-fired inclined tube boilers from Babcock & Wilcox , in the ground floor of reciprocating steam engine driven DC generators . Originally only three generators were planned, but a fourth generator was installed shortly after commissioning. The generators together had an output of around 350 kW, which was sufficient to operate 4800 incandescent lamps with 16 candle strengths each . As was customary in the first Edison power grids, the output DC voltage was 110 V.
The generators were regulated by hand by changing a resistance in the generator's shunt winding . A device warned the operators with a bell and two different colored lamps for undervoltage and overvoltage .
The power station had a 52 m high brick chimney , which can be clearly seen in the photographs of the late 19th century next to the cathedral.
Distribution network
To connect the Scala in Milan to the grid of the power plant developed Giovanni Battista Pirelli an insulation of rubber , with the power lines could be laid in the ground. Two semicircular conductors with a large cross-section were housed in a copper tube and the spaces between them were filled with rubber, similar to the Kruesi tube . The pipes were connected to junction boxes, which were also filled with rubber.
Unlike Edison's DC system, the power plant only used two conductors for the distribution network instead of three. Two generators were always connected in series ; The central conductor from the Edison system is omitted, so that the voltage in the conductors of the distribution network was 220 V and the consumers were also connected in series in pairs.
The supply area of the power plant was small; it reached from the Piazza del Duomo to the Piazza della Scala and included the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping arcade . The users of the electric lighting were the shops in the arcades on the north side of the Piazza del Duomo and in the shopping arcade, the Manzoni theaters and La Scala in Milan. These were probably the only customers willing to pay twice as much for electric lighting as they would for gas lighting.
See also
literature
- Stefano Righi: La città illuminata: L'intuizione di Giuseppe Colombo, la Edison e l'elettrificazione dell'Italia . Rizzoli, 2014, ISBN 978-88-586-6513-8 ( google.com ).
Web links
- Gian Luca Lapini: La Centrale elettrica di via Santa Radegonda. In: Storia di Milano. January 30, 2004 (Italian).
Individual evidence
- ↑ La prima centrale termoelettrica europea. In: 9Colone. Retrieved December 7, 2019 (it-IT).
- ↑ cinema S. Radegonda - cinema Odeon. In: giusepperausa.it. Retrieved December 9, 2019 (Italian).
- ↑ Il vecchio teatro Santa Radegonda. In: ilmirino.it. December 2, 2014, accessed December 9, 2019 (Italian).
- ↑ Gian Luca Lapini, Note 8
- ↑ Gian Luca Lapini, Note 3
- ↑ Gian Luca Lapini