Tower station

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Natural stone masonry - transformer tower in Kraichgau ⊙

A tower station or transformer tower is a design of the transformer station in which the technical system is housed in a tower-shaped house. The construction as a tower has the advantage that overhead lines can be guyed directly on the upper part of the tower and led inside without the need for a special guy mast .

Inside the tower there is a switchgear and transformer station that distributes the medium voltage between the lines and converts it to low voltage in order to supply consumers within a range of a few hundred meters to a few kilometers.

distribution

Tower stations are mainly found in rural areas. In urban areas, transformer stations are designed as a compact unit in the basement of buildings. Tower stations are often located at the intersection of up to four lines, which can be switched in an air-insulated switchgear with switch disconnectors . Surge arresters are located outside to protect the switchgear inside.

Tower stations are widespread in other European countries, but there are practically no tower stations in North America. Local transformers there are usually designed as mast transformers .

Since the beginning of the 1980s, new tower stations have rarely been built. Instead, transformer stations are designed on the ground floor as cheaper and smaller, compact transformer stations with standardized construction elements. The electrical lines are fed in as underground cables . Existing tower stations will be decommissioned on a large scale. In Lower Silesia there are still many tower stations from the pre-war period.

Cultural and industrial historical importance

The tower stations today - with their architecture adapted to the region - bear witness to over a century of industrial architecture. Many transformer towers have become landmarks and an indispensable part of the landscape. The listed former transformer house in Balve- Wocklum, which was built in 1913, is historically in the peculiarity of the Wilhelmian style (neo-baroque). The architecture was developed from the shape of a church and castle tower.

Use of decommissioned tower stations

In order to avoid the demolition of the historic tower stations, they are used in many places by associations or private individuals for a wide variety of purposes in the fields of nature conservation, tourism, culture, welfare or education. Nature conservation associations and foundations converted tower stations into species protection towers, with nesting boxes for birds and hiding places for bats. Some of the old tower stations are also listed.

gallery

literature

Web links

Commons : Distribution Transformer Stations  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sebastian Ackermann, Maria Dehling: From tower to tower. Tips and tours around a piece of electricity history. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2011, p. 5 (editorial).
  2. ↑ Ulrich Barth, Elmar Hartmann, August Kracht , Heinz Störing: Art and historical monuments in the Märkisches Kreis . 3rd revised and expanded edition. Heimatbund Märkischer Kreis, Altena 1993, ISBN 3-89053-000-1 , p. 830/831 .
  3. ↑ Sebastian Ackermann, Maria Dehling: From tower to tower. Tips and tours around a piece of electricity history. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2011, p. 11. The tower station “Auf dem Mars” in Wesel, for example, serves as a bird and bat hotel with nesting aids for kestrels and a box for barn owls. It is the first tower station for which RWE has been able to win over the Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NaBu).
  4. ↑ Turmverein Damm e. V. Accessed May 27, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Kunigunde tower station. Retrieved February 9, 2017 .