Wallsee-Mitterkirchen power plant

Wallsee-Mitterkirchen power plant
Wallsee-Mitterkirchen power plant from the underwater side
location
Coordinates	48 ° 10 '0 "  N , 14 ° 41' 42"  E Coordinates: 48 ° 10 '0 "  N , 14 ° 41' 42"  E
country	Austria  Upper Austria
place	Wallsee / Mitterkirchen
Waters	Danube
Kilometers of water	km 2094.50
Height upstream	240  m above sea level A.
power plant
owner	VERBUND Hydro Power AG
operator	VERBUND Hydro Power AG
construction time	1965-1968
technology
Bottleneck performance	210 megawatts
Average height of fall	10.8 m
Expansion flow	2,700 m³ / s
Standard work capacity	1,319 million kWh / year
Turbines	6 Kaplan turbines
Generators	6 synchronous generators
Others

The Wallsee-Mitterkirchen power plant is a run-of- river power plant in the Danube next to the Lower Austrian municipality of Wallsee in the Upper Austrian market town of Mitterkirchen .

This Austrian Danube power plant was built between 1965 and 1968 and belongs to the Upper Danube plant group .

It was the first Austrian Danube power plant to be built using drywall construction. The excavation of 10 million cubic meters for the new Danube Canal was the largest closed earthmoving in Austria to date.

Location, traffic, borders

Before the power plant was built, the strongly curved Danube loop in front of Wallsee was an obstacle for shipping. It was built to the north, next to the original Danube basin. After completion, the Danube was diverted into the new basin over a length of around 3.5 kilometers.

There is a bridge over the power plant that can be used by vehicles up to 3.5 tons and is of major importance for regional traffic because previously there was only a roller ferry between Mitterkirchen and Wallsee. As the only Austrian Danube power plant, it has been allowed to cross with cars since 1971, although no separate public road or bridge was planned. Due to the associated high repair costs, the opening time for traffic has been restricted since 1986 and regulated by an automatic traffic light system. The Danube Cycle Path leads across the power plant site on the left bank of the Danube . At the rest area, cyclists can decide whether to continue on the left or right bank of the Danube.

The administrative-political federal states, districts and municipalities in Machland run along the Danube bed before the Wallsee-Mitterkirchen Danube power plant was built, so that small parts of the Mitterkirchen municipality are now south of the Danube and parts of the Wallsee-Sindelburg and Strengberg municipalities are north of the Danube. Accordingly, there are parts of the Mühlviertel and the Perg district in the Machland , which have been south of the Danube and parts of the Mostviertel and the Amstetten district since then which have been north of the Danube.

Building history

During the construction of the power plant, Mitterkirchen was home to the largest closed construction site in Europe, employing up to 2,700 people. The machine park consisted of 40 large excavators, 20 bulldozers, 20 compressors, 30 cranes, 30 large dump trucks and 70 trucks. In the main excavation, two million cubic meters of earth were moved and 950,000 tons of concrete were processed. The total excavation reached ten million cubic meters. At times up to 3,000 people lived in the workers' housing camp in Mitterkirchen, which was roughly twice the number of inhabitants in Mitterkirchen at the time. Up to 700 foreign workers were registered in the community's registration file. About 20,000 people went through the registration files of the municipal office. The income from the payroll tax and trade tax during the construction period allowed the Mitterkirchen community to become the financially strongest community in Upper Austria and enabled the implementation of larger local construction projects.

During the construction, the flood protection for the Machland was also set up, but this was by far not enough to protect the region from further flood disasters in the following years. As part of the Machland Nord flood protection project, an approximately nine-kilometer-long drainage basin will be built next to the actual dams by 2015, through which part of the water masses can be channeled past the power station.

technical description

The system has six weir fields and two locks (each 230 m × 24 m). The reservoir length of the river is 24 km and the reservoir target is 240  m above sea level. A. at river kilometers 2,094.5.

Six machine sets in the machine house , which was built on the right, southern bank of the Danube, supply electricity to the public grid . Each of these machine sets consists of a Kaplan bulb turbine with a vertical shaft and a directly coupled three-phase generator . The Kaplan bulb turbines 1 and 2 each have a nominal output of 35,400 kW and the turbines 3 to 6 have a nominal output of 35,500  kW each . The impeller diameter of 7.8 m, the nominal speed of 65.2 min ⁻¹ and the nominal flow of 450 m³ / s are identical for all six turbines. The mean raw fall height is 10.5 m.

The six three-phase generators have a nominal voltage of 8,000 volts and a nominal output of 42,500 kilovolt amperes (kVA) each .

Overall, the power plant has a bottleneck capacity of 210 MW.

With an expanded flow rate of 2,700 m³ / s, the standard energy capacity is 1,318.8 million kWh per year .

ecology

The Danube oxbow lake Wallsee has a length of 3.8 km and a maximum width of 280 m and lies to the right between the river - km 2097 and 2093 upstream of the market town of Wallsee. The formation of the old arm goes back to the construction of the Danube power station Wallsee - Mitterkirchen in 1968.

Before that, today's oxbow lake formed the main channel of the Danube. Open oxbow lakes are of particular importance for the conservation of a species-rich fish fauna. As the only large oxbow lake in the Ybbs reservoir, the Wallsee oxbow lake represents a special habitat. The Wallsee oxbow lake was revitalized between 1999 and 2005 due to increasing siltation.

The Machland South European protected areas extend a few kilometers downstream in Lower Austria . Both the above and the Lower Austrian part of the area were of BirdLife Austria for Important Bird Area declared (IBA). Efforts are being made to designate parts of the Upper Austrian Machland as the Machland North European protected area .

The Danube Altarmweg was redesigned in 2010. A part of this route is also used by the Way of St. James Persenbeug – Sankt Pantaleon .

See also

• List of Austrian power plants
• List of reservoirs in Austria

Web links

Commons : Wallsee-Mitterkirchen power plant  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• VERBUND AG website on the Wallsee-Mitterkirchen power plant , accessed on August 16, 2018

Individual evidence

1. ^ K. Liewehr: Danube power plant Wallsee-Mitterkirchen. Vienna, 1968, quoted in: Franz Asanger: Mitterkirchen - A historical portrait of the Machland community. Marktgemeinde Mitterkirchen im Machland (ed.), Linz 1999, p. 335ff.
2. ^ Franz Asanger: Mitterkirchen - A historical portrait of the Machland community. Marktgemeinde Mitterkirchen im Machland (Ed.), Linz 1999, p. 341.
3. ^ Office of the Lower Austrian Provincial Government, Spatial Planning, Environment and Transport Group, Nature Conservation Department (Ed.): European Protected Areas "Machland South". Sankt Pölten 2009, map p. 6.
4. ^ Josef Riesenberger: Mitterkirchen, Hallstatt period open-air museum. In: Our home, the district of Perg. Association for the publication of a district home book Perg - communities of the district of Perg (publisher), Linz 1995, p. 266ff.
5. ↑ Duck varnishes