Sonzier
| Sonzier | ||
|---|---|---|
| State : |
 Switzerland
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| Canton : |
 Vaud (VD)
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| District : | Riviera-Pays-d'Enhaut | |
| Municipality : | Montreux | |
| Postal code : | 1822 | |
| Coordinates : | 560297 / 143096 | |
| Height : | 655 m above sea level M. | |
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The village of Sonzier is located near Lake Geneva at an altitude of 580 to 665 meters above sea level on the southern slope of the Cubly above the Gorge du Chauderon near Montreux , to which it also belongs, in the Swiss canton of Vaud . Sonzier has a stop on the Montreux – Lenk railway in the Simmental between Montreux and Montbovon , on which the Montreux – Bernese Oberland Railway runs.
Sonzier hydroelectric power station
In Sonzier there is a water reservoir that is dammed up by a gravity dam made of masonry or concrete, the height of which is given as 8.5 or ten meters. The reservoir was built in 1888 to supply power to the Vevey-Montreux-Chillon-Villeneuve tram , which ran along the lake from 1888 to the 1950s. This tramway was the first electrically operated railway in Switzerland. The reservoir has a storage capacity of two times 2500 cubic meters.
On November 6, 1888 at 5:00 a.m., six months after the railway went into operation, the dam broke and caused a tidal wave that resulted in five, seven, nine or thirteen deaths, depending on the source. Apparently the construction was too weak and the masonry inadequate. According to a contemporary source, the tidal wave developed an effect of 22,000 horsepower (PS). Those responsible were subsequently acquitted across all judicial instances; the courts adopted the defense counsel's argumentation: "Nature can only be wrested from its secrets against great victims".
The Sonzier power plant was rebuilt, today has a Pelton turbine with a total output of 1.66 MW and produces an average annual electricity volume of 7.1 million kilowatt hours at a head of 378 meters and a flow rate of 500 liters per second. The water is also used as drinking water .
Attractions
literature
- A. Vogel: Failures of masonry and concrete dams in Europe. In: Safety of Dams. Proc. of the Int. Conf. on Safety of Dams, Coimbra, Portugal, April 1984. ISBN 90-6191-522-8 , pp. 45-54.
- G. Mantel: The stability conditions of the reservoir in Sonzier. In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung. Vol. 12, 1988 (sic!)
- D. Varaschin, L. Laloux (Eds.): Courrières, aux risques de l'histoire. Groupe de recherche en histoire de l'énergie, Vincennes, 2006, ISBN 2-916895-00-0 , pp. 447-468.
- Rector's speech from 1895 of the Royal Technical University of Aachen (darwin.bth.rwth-aachen.de)