It was a memorable autumn day in 1924 when the Upper Austrian Hydropower and Electricity Company opened its first plant, “Partenstein”, after barely five years of construction. 100 years later, it is still producing electricity – as a storage power station, primarily to balance out peak consumption. In the still young First Republic, it was the first power station of this size – a truly great feat. Even Federal President Michael Hainisch and the Secretary General of the League of Nations, Alfred R. Zimmermann, came to the opening. The latter was officially responsible for the reconstruction of Austria.
Partenstein made a significant contribution to this, as the electricity from the Mühlviertel was even used to power the tram in the capital Vienna. For this purpose, a 110-kV line was built from Partenstein to Vienna. Today, 100 years later, the storage power station is still supplying energy. The pioneering spirit of that time still permeates the power station halls designed in the late Art Nouveau style by Mauriz Balzarek. During the construction period from 1919 to 1924, a reservoir had to be built for the storage power station. For this purpose, a 17-meter-high dam was built in the valley of the Große Mühl north of the town of Neufelden to dam up the river. The resulting lake swallowed up – as reported – the town of Langhalsen.
Video: A tour of the Partenstein power plant
Water tunnel and pipeline
From the intake structure on the southern shore of the reservoir, an underground rock tunnel with a total length of 5.6 kilometers and a diameter of 2.95 meters leads. This initially runs beneath the town of Neufelden, but then emerges again in a short pipe bridge over the Mühltal. The tunnel then runs beneath the town of Kleinzell to a ridge above the power plant. Here, the so-called surge tank must absorb pressure surges before the water thunders through a pipeline to the power plant.
Experienced employees
Although the power plant has long been controlled by the Energie-AG hydropower control center in Gmunden, experienced employees are still needed in the power plant to keep the plant running. One of them is the locksmith Siegfried Hofer. He has been working in Partenstein since 1990. He knows every screw and knows how the technology works. “The main machine set consists of two Francis spiral turbines, each with 18 MW, and the two three-phase synchronous generators, each with 21.5 MVA,” he explains. When the turbines were renewed in 1964, a Kaplan bulb turbine with an output of 2192 kW was also installed in order to utilize the energy in the residual water. “The conversion was necessary because the entire technology had to be raised seven meters after the Aschach power plant was built,” explains Hofer.
Black start possible
There is also a smaller Pelton turbine that covers the power plant’s own consumption and enables a “black start”. “We can therefore start up the power plant autonomously,” explains Hofer. This is particularly important in the event of a blackout in order to rebuild the grid supply.
The last modernization of the Partenstein power plant in 2018 to 2019 included a general renovation in which the substation, which was originally built in 1924, was renewed and modernized.
Source: Nachrichten
