Abstract
AT Kembs in Alsace about seven miles below the Franco-Swiss frontier there has recently been completed a hydro-electric station which utilises water-power from the River Rhine. According to the Electrical Review of July 28 the plant forms part of an extensive development programme which is being carried out in connexion with the Grand Canal of Alsace on the French bank of the Rhine. The present station is the first of eight hydro-electric stations which will be constructed between Strasbourg and the Swiss frontier. The canal, when completed, will have a length of about 70 miles and will be divided into eight sections having differences of level of between 33 and 54 ft. There will be a generating station at each lock and the total capacity will be 700,000 kilowatts. The construction of a dam on the Rhine at the Kembs station has raised its level by 23 ft. The power house has at present five turbogenerator sets each of 31,000 kilowatts. The power generated is stepped up at a transformer station in the open air to 150 kilovolts for transmission to eastern France and to 220 kv. for the lines running to Troyes and the Paris area. In order to maintain an even load at the power station, a pumping station is being constructed so that when the electric load is light the excess power can be used for pumping water into Lac Noire about forty miles away. A generating plant at the lake returns the power to the Kembs station when the load on the latter is heavy. The central control room has been equipped with elaborate illuminated diagrammatic connexions. The devices used enable all the requisite connexion movements to be prepared and verified before they are actually made by direct control or by signals to substations:
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Electric Power from the Rhine. Nature 132, 235 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132235b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132235b0