Dinorwig Power Station

F1

The pumped storage power plant Dinorwig (English Dinorwig power station, also English Dinorwic ) is located at Dinorwig near the village of Llanberis in the Snowdonia National Park in Gwynedd, North Wales, UK. It is equipped with a power output of 1728 MW, the most powerful pumped storage plant in Europe and the third largest worldwide. It is used to cover peak load in the public power supply network.

The water is stored at high altitude in Marchlyn - Mawr reservoir and during times of peak energy demand discharged through turbines in the Llyn Peris. It is pumped back in phases of weak electricity consumption from the Llyn Peris in the Marchlyn Mawr.

The plant was built from 1974 to 1984 in the abandoned Dinorwic Quarry. In order to disrupt the National Park less, the power plants were built deep into the mountain Elidir Fawr. The construction costs amounted to a total of 425 million British pounds. (Inflation -adjusted basis, today 984 million pounds. ) It was until then the largest construction project of the British government. The contractor was a consortium of Alfred McAlpine, fire and Zschokke. During the construction of 1 million tons of concrete, 200,000 tons of cement and 4,500 tons of steel were used. 12 million tons of rock had to be broken out. It originated 16 km tunnel, some of them wide enough to allow two trucks to can easily meet, and a cavity with dimensions: 51 m high, 180 m long and 23 m wide, which is known as a "concert hall ". The power station is at Pentir with the British National network (s :) connected through a 400 kV cable that is buried over a distance of 10 km, so you see no utility poles.

The power plant has six 288 MW GEC generators that are coupled with Francis turbines that can also run backwards as pumps. The generators have a vertical axis. From a stop, the 450 -ton generator can be synchronized in 75 seconds, and running at full load. From the idle power of 1728 MW can be achieved with synchronized generators within 16 seconds. The power plant can run at a basin fill six hours.

Excess water flows from Llyn Padarn for. Both Llyn Peris and Llyn Padarn, were the home of Arctic char ( Arctic char ), a rare fish in the UK. When the plant was put into operation, the fish were caught and brought to other lakes. Therefore, it is believed that there is no more now because of the fluctuating water levels of this species here.

Originally, the pumped storage power plant was built to compensate for the constant, but inflexible base load of British nuclear power plants during peak load periods. However, it may store only the power of a nuclear power plant for a few hours. There are now more flexible gas power plants, so that the need for pumped storage power plants for balancing the electricity demand between day and night has fallen. Therefore, another PSW was never built in Exmoor. Dinorwig now serves more to compensate for rapid peak demand, for example, at the end of popular TV shows, when many people turn on the light at the same time. Therefore, the observation of the television programs for controlling the electricity is extremely important.

Another important purpose of Dinorwig is that it can help to start the power supply again in the case of a complete failure. But it also has some diesel generators and large batteries, which allow a black start. Some fossil fuel power plants can, however, also.

The power plant has an average efficiency of 74-75 %, which means that it uses when pumping 33 % more electricity than it produces. That's still cheaper to keep available as additional power plants idling.

The power plant is also a tourist attraction. Visitors can drive a minibus in the so-called " Electric Mountain ".