Kaprun power plant
Map with all coordinates: 
The Kaprun power plant comprises a group of pumped storage hydropower plants in the municipality of Kaprun ( Hohe Tauern , Kapruner Tal ) in the province of Salzburg in Austria . The Kaprun power plant was built by the former Tauernkraftwerke AG , and since 1999 it has belonged to Verbund Hydro Power AG, the subsidiary for hydropower generation of Verbund AG.
functionality
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Scheme of storage power plants in Kaprun as of 2019 |
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The Kaprun electricity plant is a water storage power plant with the option of pump operation and generates electricity to cover peak loads . The power plants are monitored and remotely controlled from the central control room in Kaprun. The electrical energy is conducted via two 220 kV lines to the Tauern substation , where it is fed into the national high - voltage network .
The power plant group consists of the following barrages :
- Upper (Kraftwerk Limberg & Limberg II) with: reservoir Margaritze , reservoir Mooserboden
- Main level with: Waterfallboden reservoir
- Klammsee power plant with: Klammsee reservoir
It currently has an installed capacity of 833 MW for power generation and 610 MW for pump operation. The standard energy capacity of Limberg and the main stage (including pump-circulating operation) together amounts to 742 million kWh (742,000 MWh, 742 GWh) per year. This corresponds to 890 full load hours and an annual efficiency of 10.2%.
The water that is used in the power plants to generate electricity is largely meltwater from the Pasterzen glacier of the Großglockner , Austria's highest mountain. This water is collected in the Margaritze reservoir and channeled or pumped through the 11.6 km long Möll transfer tunnel into the Mooserboden reservoir, depending on its water level. It tunnels through the watershed of the main Alpine ridge between the Drau / Mur and Salzach / Inn. After being used in the upper level, the water is stored in the Wasserfallboden reservoir and used again in the main level. Due to the catchment areas to the north and south of the main Alpine ridge, precipitation events in various climatic zones can be recorded and used - and also regulated for flood protection .
In 2011, the Limberg II pumped storage power plant went into operation. This increased the installed turbine and pump output of the power plant group by 480 MW.
Margaritze reservoir (2018)
Mooserboden Reservoir (2010)
Upper reservoir dam (2007)
View from the pumped storage power plant to the waterfall floor (2012)
Mechanical engineering systems
The upper level consists of the Limberg I power house and the Limberg II power cavern , which use the water from the Mooserboden reservoir to generate electricity and pump water from the Wasserfallboden reservoir to the Mooserboden reservoir. Limberg I stands directly at the foot of the Limbergsperre, Limberg II is completely underground and was built between 2007 and 2010 parallel to the existing Limberg power plant. In addition, the Möllpumpwerk pumps water from the Margaritze reservoir to the Mooserboden reservoir as required . It is possible to expand the upper level with another Limberg III power cavern, although its construction was judged to be uneconomical in 2019 due to low energy prices, despite the existing permit.
Since 2012, the water from the Hirzbach overpass has been used by a small power plant before it is released into the Mooserboden reservoir.
The water from the Wasserfallboden reservoir flows through a 7,065 m long pressure tunnel and further through a 1,400 m long pressure shaft to the machine house, which is located south of the center of Kaprun. The pressure shaft has been in operation since mid-2004 and replaces the old 1,200 meter long, four-leg pressure pipeline that was dismantled in 2007. There are four generator sets in the machine house. The processed water flows over the Kapruner Ache into the Salzach. There is no pumping operation here.
The Klammsee power plant is used to supply the Kaprun power plant group with its own needs. The Klammsee lies about half a kilometer above the machine house of the main stage and is formed by a 19 m high weight wall that dams the Kapruner Ache. The power plant's machine sets are located in the main stage power house.
| Names | location | Plant type |
Regelarbeits- assets |
power | Machine sets | Medium raw head | Expansion water volume | Installation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kaprun high school | ||||||||
| Möllpumpwerk | 47 ° 10 ′ 1 ″ N , 12 ° 43 ′ 41.8 ″ E | Pumping station | 13.4 MW | 2 horizontal 2-flow single-stage radial pumps | 27.8 m³ / s | 1955 | ||
| Power house Limberg I |
47 ° 11 '49.7 " N , 12 ° 43' 9.4" E | Pumped storage plant | 166 GWh | 113 MW | 2 horizontal machine sets consisting of a Francis turbine , a motor generator and a two-stage radial pump | 365 m | 36 m³ / s | 1954-1955 |
| Cavern power house Limberg II |
47 ° 11 '56.7 " N , 12 ° 43' 23.5" E | Pumped storage plant | 1300 GWh | 480 MW | 2 vertical reversible Francis pump turbines | 365 m | 144 m³ / s | 2011 |
|
Cavern power house Limberg III |
47 ° 11 '56.5 " N , 12 ° 43' 32.1" E | Pumped storage plant | 1300 GWh | 480 MW | 2 vertical reversible Francis pump turbines | 365 m | 144 m³ / s | not before 2025 (start of construction not known, as of March 2019) |
| Hirzbach | ||||||||
| Hirzbach small power station | 47 ° 11 '48 " N , 12 ° 43' 16.3" E | Diversion power plant | 3.3 GWh | 1.4 MW | 2 Francis turbines | 151 m | 1.8 m³ / s | 2012 |
| Kaprun main level | ||||||||
| Maiskogel pumping station | 47 ° 15 '29.1 " N , 12 ° 43' 7.2" E | Pumping station | 2.2 MW | 2 horizontal two-stage semi-axial pumps | 2.5 m³ / s | 1986 | ||
| Krafthaus Kaprun main level |
47 ° 15 ′ 34.7 " N , 12 ° 44 ′ 19.4" E | Storage power plant | 499 GWh | 220 MW | 4 horizontal double Pelton turbines | 891 m | 32.5 m³ / s | 1952 |
| Klammsee (own use) | ||||||||
| Krafthaus Kaprun main level |
47 ° 15 ′ 34.7 " N , 12 ° 44 ′ 19.4" E | Diversion power plant | 3.4 GWh | 0.5 MW | 2 horizontal Francis turbines | 65 m | 1 m³ / s | 1948 |
history
The idea and the first concepts for the Kaprun-Großglockner project came about in 1928 at the AEG company in Berlin under the title Tauern Power Plant or "Centralization Project ". Due to technical and financial difficulties at the beginning of the global economic crisis , the idea was initially discarded in the early 1930s and only taken up again by the National Socialists in 1938 . The VIAG subsidiary Alpen-Elektrowerke , which they founded in 1938, was commissioned with the execution.
After the groundbreaking ceremony for extensive propaganda purposes, the actual work began with the inspection and surveying of the site in 1938/39. Due to the lack of empirical values, numerous withdrawals and analyzes of rock samples were necessary for the planning. Access roads and smaller bridges were built to develop the future construction site in difficult terrain. In addition, barracks for engineers and workers were set up and some anchorages for material ropeways were concreted.
Although under the National Socialist regime not a single foundation was laid and work was mainly carried out in summer, there were numerous injuries and deaths among the poorly equipped and poorly fed forced laborers for high alpine conditions . Up to 1945, 56 deaths of up to 83 workers were documented (between 1946 and 1951 a total of 78 workers were killed in accidents or avalanches).
Right from the start, the project suffered from a lack of machines and suitable engineers. The construction work developed slowly. Significantly, the Todt organization was not deployed in Kaprun. In the winter of 1942/43 the project was practically shut down. Armaments Minister Speer had set new priorities. The forced laborers were used in the armaments industry (e.g. construction of underground tunnels for ammunition, tank and aircraft construction), and the few still usable devices were withdrawn from Kaprun. That is why the construction of the machine house and the Limbergsperre did not begin until after 1945 (start of concreting of the Limbergsperre: September 8, 1948).
Due to the climate-related shortness of full work and the lack of construction equipment and competent personnel, the work in the Nazi era can be estimated at a maximum of five percent of the total effort of the first expansion stage up to 1955. Often mentioned (much) higher estimates are completely unfounded. The construction site, which the Union-Baugesellschaft documented in detail, clearly shows the overall situation in 1948.
As was customary at the time, detailed planning for complex projects was carried out step by step, especially since no relevant experience was available for this high mountain project. After the end of the war, the Austrian authorities found few detailed plans. Therefore, after 1945 it was possible without much effort to change or improve the concept in several places and to adapt it to the much more generous financial post-war funds.
From 1947 the project was funded with enormous funds from the Marshall Plan (1.43 billion schillings ). During the construction of the Mooserboden upper stage power plant, the US experts initially slowed down the granting of further ERP loans because they questioned the profitability of the project. Instead, they demanded the construction of a high-voltage line across the Arlberg in order to use the energy from Vorarlberger Illwerke AG in their own country. For Austria, however, Kaprun had become such an important question of prestige that the American partners could be changed.
After the financing was secured in 1947, construction began immediately, as the high identity-creating and propagandistic value for the reconstruction dynamic of the Second Republic was recognized early on . Among the few construction machines that were initially set up in 1946/47 were some donated by the USA, including one of the legendary " Erie excavators ". On September 23, 1955, the power plant was put into operation with a topping-out ceremony.
In the 2010s, Kaprun entered the debate about the energy transition . On the one hand, it had been converted into one of the most efficient pumped storage systems in the Alps - largely unnoticed by the public due to the minimal use of landscape in the new Limberg II cavern facility. These play an important role in the management of the strongly fluctuating wind and solar power. On the other hand, the debate about the 380 kV ring line in Austria and closing the gap with the Salzburg line through the Salzach valley, which is also intended to improve the connection of Kaprun to the modern European high-voltage network, flared up .
The Kaprun myth
Supported by propaganda as early as the Nazi era, Kaprun developed in the post-war years , but even more after its opening, into a symbol of Austrian reconstruction, which was characterized by certain factors:
- In Kaprun everyone worked together, everyone was comrades, regardless of their origin or their job on the construction site. Whether miners or chief engineers, they fought side by side for the common cause.
- Kaprun was staged as a war. Man fought against nature, which was finally successfully conquered with the help of technology. The numerous victims were thought of as those who had died in the fight for the common cause. On the memorial for the construction workers who died in the accident you can read: "A work made of work and sacrifice"
The war metaphors offered the population socialized during the war, similar to the victim thesis , a broad identification potential. The rhetoric of the story of the united workers is strongly reminiscent of the National Socialist community, but it had a unifying effect on the newly created identity. Against the backdrop of the Alps , the victory of a united people over an apparently overwhelming, natural opponent could be staged. A victory that was denied both in 1938 and 1945, but for peaceful purposes. As a result, Kaprun became the founding myth of the resurrected Second Republic of Austria , just as the nearby Grossglockner High Alpine Road became the consolidation myth of the First Republic in the times of the Great Depression , which, as “ rest of Austria ”, had initially doubted its economic viability.
In the 1970s a transformation of the myth can be observed, the technology (the huge dams and the power house) fades into the background in the photographs, the attention is directed almost exclusively to the mountain and lake landscape. The victory of man over nature no longer seemed worth striving for, at that time the environmental movement in Austria began with the occupation of the Hainburger Au . The power plants can still develop their effect and today - together with the Hohe Tauern National Park - form an important component in the tourism marketing of the Zell am See / Pinzgau region in the field of tension between human development and natural preservation of the high alpine region.
The suffering of the Jewish slave laborers and the suppression of this story in post-war Austria became the subject of the 2003 play The work of Elfriede Jelinek . As a result of the more public debate about Austria's participation in the atrocities of war, the Kaprunertal increasingly became a “memory landscape” that documents all of the core issues of recent Austrian history.
Sepp Forcher , who was an unskilled worker on the construction site as a young man, contradicted the legend of self-sacrificing camaraderie on construction in 2016: “Every unskilled worker had his worker, he had his foreman, he had his foreman, and the foreman had his engineer. That was strictly hierarchical. ”And, according to Forcher, there could be no question of collective struggle:“ It was all about work. ”
See also
literature
- Manfred Hohn : 56 railways in the construction of the Glockner-Kaprun power plant group . Phoibos Verlag, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-85161-028-4 .
- Othmar Franz Lang : The men of Kaprun . Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1955, DNB 452702720 .
- Christoph Ransmayr : Kaprun or the erection of a wall. In: The Way to Surabaya. Reports and little prose. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-10-062916-7 .
- Margit Reiter : The Tauern power plant in Kaprun . In: Oliver Rathkolb , Florian Freund (ed.): Nazi forced labor in the "Ostmark" electricity industry 1938-1945. Böhlau, Vienna 2002, ISBN 978-3-205-79571-1 .
- Jürgen Thorwald : High above Kaprun. Südverlag, Munich 1954
Film, theater and radio play
- White gold. Feature film, directed by Eduard von Borsody , 1949
- The song of Kaprun . Fiction film, director: Anton Kutter , 1955
- Horst Mönnich : Kaprun. Radio play, 1955
- Clouds over Kaprun. TV series, director: Franz Josef Gottlieb , screenplay: Hellmut Andics , 1964–1966
- Call of the woods . Feature film, directed by Franz Antel , 1965
- Elfriede Jelinek : The work . Burgtheater Vienna 2002
Web links
- Storage power plant Kaprun main stage , pumped storage power plant Kaprun upper stage , pumped storage power plant Kaprun Limberg II. Detailed description on the website of Verbund AG (verbund.com).
- Chronology of the construction ( memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), on turbo.at/geheimprojekte
- Tauern power plants in Kaprun . In: Salzburger Nachrichten : Salzburgwiki .
- Roman Tschiedl: Steel storm made of concrete , from the series Hundert Häuser - The Republic of Austria as reflected in its architecture , Radio Ö1 , October 23, 2018
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Limberg II pumped storage plant officially put into operation. (Press release) EUR 405 million investment in expanding the green battery. (No longer available online.) VERBUND, October 5, 2011, archived from the original on October 12, 2011 ; Retrieved October 20, 2011 . 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.
- ↑ Kaprun power plant: expansion approved , orf.at, accessed on June 27, 2018.
- ↑ a b Verbund: More profit after one-off effects. Small newspaper
- ↑ Description of the Klammsee power plant at Verbund.com , accessed on November 13, 2015.
- ↑ according to SAGIS Online
- ↑ Kaprun: Limberg II produces electricity for the first time. ORF Salzburg
- ↑ Limberg III pumped storage plant. Extract from the water book of the state of Salzburg
- ^ Marshall Plan . In: Salzburger Nachrichten : Salzburgwiki .
- ↑ Ernst Lind: Glockner-Kaprun is complete. The topping-out ceremony of the Mooser and Drossensperre . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna September 25, 1955, p. 1–2 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
- ↑ Peter Gnaiger: Energy from the eternal ice. In: Salzburger Nachrichten . May 13, 2016, p. 18.
- ↑ "Kaprun." Radio play, 1955 , Radio Ö1
