Thorenberg power plant
| Thorenberg power plant | |||
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| location | |||
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| Coordinates | 661 504 / 211613 | ||
| country | Switzerland | ||
| Waters | Little Emme | ||
| Data | |||
| Type | Canal power plant | ||
| Primary energy | Hydropower | ||
| power | 725 kW | ||
| owner | EWL Energie Wasser Luzern Holding | ||
| Project start | 1884 | ||
| Start of operations | 1886 | ||
| turbine | Francis spiral turbine | ||
| Energy fed in per year | 4.8 million kWh GWh | ||
| Website | EWL Lucerne | ||
The Thorenberg power plant is a run-of-river power plant in the former municipality of Littau in the city of Lucerne in the canton of Lucerne . It is considered the first AC power plant of Switzerland , which is a power network with medium voltage - and low-voltage level energized.
The water is led from the Kleine Emme to the power station via a canal. The 25.6 meter wide weir in the river ensures a constant water level in the canal. The amount of water flowing into the headwater canal can be regulated with the help of inlet gates . After passing through the turbines, the water is returned to the Kleine Emme in an underwater canal.
history
Time of the Troller brothers (1884-1897)
In 1884 the sawmill owners Troller acquired the Neumühle Thorenberg with their water usage rights and began building a canal power plant in the rooms that had previously been used by a hammer forge. In May 1886 the Thorenberg power plant went into operation as the first Swiss alternating current power plant to be fed into a power grid, which marked the beginning of public electrification in Switzerland.
The company Bell Maschinenfabrik supplied and installed the mechanical parts of the plant. The Girard vertical turbine with an output of 250 HP (184 kW) was located seven meters below the level of the weir and drove four electrical generators via a bevel gear and a horizontal transmission : two alternating current generators of 75 kW each to generate light for the first electrical lighting of the city of Lucerne and two direct current generators of 37 kW each to generate power for the Trollersche Mühlen and sawmill to the Fluhmühle at the gates of Lucerne, 2.4 km away.
The alternators generated a current of 35 to 38 amperes at 250 rpm at a voltage of 1800 volts , which corresponded to an output of 63 to 68.4 kW. Only one generator was required to operate the alternating current network, the other was kept as a reserve.
In 1889 the Troller brothers also had a steam boiler and two piston steam engines installed in order to be able to generate enough electrical energy even when there was little water.
Due to the increasing demand for electrical energy, another larger machine group was installed in 1893. The additional Jonval turbine with an output of 600 HP (442 kW) directly drove a single-phase generator with an output of 400 kW at a terminal voltage of 2500 volts.
AC power grid
The energy generated in the alternating current generators was transmitted to Lucerne with a voltage of 1900 V and a frequency of 40 Hz . The overhead line was 4.6 kilometers long and consisted of four 6 mm thick copper wires . The medium voltage of 1400 V still arriving there was transformed down to 100 V and used for the lighting of the two hotels Schweizerhof and Luzernerhof. For this purpose, 7 transformers of 7 kVA were used, each of which supplied 200 incandescent lamps with an output of 35 W.
In addition to the hotels, the Trollersche mills and sawmill were also supplied with electricity for electric light, using a 1.4 kVA transformer for 40 lamps. The power plant itself also had 15 lamps that were supplied by a transformer.
The toroidal transformers used had an efficiency of 95%. They had a primary winding with 1.5 mm thick copper wires and a secondary winding with 6 mm thick wires and were provided with fabric insulation. The supplier was the company Ganz & Cie from Budapest , founded by a Swiss . The technology of power distribution using distribution transformers was only applied for a patent one year before the power plant went into operation by Messrs. Miksa Déri and Károly Zipernowsky , both employees of the Ganz company, and previously tested in tests in Vienna .
The city of Lucerne was supplied with power, stepped down to 28 V, for the first electrical lighting .
Time of Stadtwerke Luzern (from 1897)
The city of Lucerne acquired the Troller brothers' power station in 1897. The Lucerne electricity company was founded and Viktor Troller became its first director. After the city of Lucerne had built another power plant, the Obermatt power plant in Engelbergertal, in 1905 and thus had sufficient capacity to supply electricity, the city sold the Thorenberg power plant to Eisenwerke Von Moos in 1917 , which installed another group of machines in 1929 and the We had the weir rebuilt and provided with a counterweight weir.
The Electricity Luzern-Engelberg AG bought back in 1997 the power plant. The power plant was completely renovated in 2000 and the weir was automated, and new Francis spiral turbines and generators were installed.
Significance in the history of electrical energy supply
The Thorenberg power plant, which went into operation in May 1886, is considered the world's first hydropower plant to be fed into a distribution network with two different voltage levels.
Just a few months earlier, the first power grid with different voltage levels went into operation in the United States . It was located in the Great Barrington , Massachusetts resort town and began operating on March 20, 1886. The generator was powered by a steam engine.
The Ames power plant in the United States is the oldest hydroelectric power plant that generates alternating current for industrial purposes, that is to say to drive machines.
Technical data after the renovation
- Length of the headwater canal: 2000 m
- Length of the underwater channel: 600 m
- Gross height of fall: 14.1 m
- Maximum water flow: 6.5 m³ / s
- Speed of the machine group: 214 / min
- Turbine type: Francis spiral turbine
- Nominal power of the turbine: 787 kW
- Nominal power of the generator: 1000 kVA
- Terminal voltage of the generator: 3700 V.
- Maximum feed-in power into the 10 kV network: 725 kW
- Average annual energy production: 4.8 million kWh
Thorenberg is one of the three hydropower plants that supply Lucerne with electricity. The building is a historical monument.
See also
Web links
- Stadtwerke Luzern website , accessed on September 8, 2018.
- Chronicle of Electrical Engineering, Kraftwerke vde.com, accessed October 18, 2013
- History and technical data of the Thorenberg power plant , accessed on September 8, 2018.
swell
- Franz Landolt: Thorenberg power plant, revision and renovation of the oldest Swiss alternating current power plant . SWV, 2000.
- W. Wyssling: The development of the Swiss electricity works and their components . Swiss Electrotechnical Association , 1946.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Flow force - flow of force. Lucerne hydropower from small hydropower plants. (PDF; 1.0 MB) (No longer available online.) EWL Energie Wasser Luzern Holding , archived from the original on September 24, 2015 ; Retrieved October 20, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c Lighting system in Lucerne with inductors from Zipernowski and Deri. In: Polytechnisches Journal . 266, 1887, pp. 589-590.
- ↑ a b KW Thorenberg. In: Geocaching.com. Retrieved October 18, 2013 (with sectional drawings and pictures).
- ^ M. Reithoffer: An anniversary of the transformer . In: Electrical engineering and mechanical engineering . No. 51 , 1925, pp. 1011-1013 ( Austrian National Library [accessed October 26, 2013]).
- ^ Milestones: Alternating Current Electrification, 1886. In: IEEE Global History Network. October 2, 2004, accessed October 21, 2013 .
- ^ Milestones: Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant, 1891. In: IEEE Global History Network. Retrieved October 21, 2013 .
- ↑ Experience Lucerne hydropower - Thorenberg power plant ( memento of the original from October 19, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 811 kB) ewl-luzern.ch, accessed October 18, 2013
