It’s Electric! Posted on July 12th, 2019 by

Where does most of the electricity come from in Switzerland?  Well this was new to us as well!  Today we learned the ins and outs of hydro-power plants and what it means for the economy and community.

Today we had an early start going into our train-hopping adventure.  Walking confidently up to our train, it takes off as we push the green button to open the door. Fortunately, we did catch the next train and moved on with our day, finally reaching KWO – hydro-power company.  As soon as we got off of the train we were greeted by our tour guide Tom.  He brought us inside to give us a brief introduction of what our day was going to consist of with scale-sized models of the mountain area that would would be going to.  We moved down the hallway that was full of history dating back to when the first dam was built in 1925.

 

Model of the collection area for KWO

Tom telling the history of the first dam

We all loaded into a van and began our ascent up the very windy road with a beautiful scenery down the valley to a one-way road.  This road was very narrow and we often felt as if we were about to drive off the cliff.  We reached the dam and got to hear about the fluctuation of the depth of water and why it changes, the sediment of the water, and a little about the construction of the new dam.  After 20 minutes, we made our way back to one of the openings to the 130 meters of tunnel that run through the mountain.  The temperature was much cooler than outside, but we were informed that it stays a consistent temperature all year, meaning that it can be warmer inside than outside in the winter time.

The Oberaar Dam

One of several tunnel trips under the mountain

The Grimsel lake, which lies underneath the Oberaar lake and is also maintained by a dam

We were brought into a room that allowed us to see the pipe that flows 2,000 liters of water a second and can be stopped just by shutting a large contraption called a butterfly valve. After getting the opportunity to peer into a huge pit called a surge chamber where the excess energy from the gushing water is dispersed when the engines are shut off, we piled back into the van and made our way to a main station below the dam. From here we entered another tunnel, this time by car.  We hopped from room to room learning more about how the water is cycled through their system of pipes and used to move the turbine which in turn spins an alternate pump that cools the axle. This system was much more sleek and simple than we expected, simply a few turbines and pumps in a room with no excess machinery. We also learned about how this particular plant helps to manage the amount of energy in the Swiss grid. The energy in the grid cannot exceed a certain threshold but must be kept above a lower bound in order for there to be sufficient energy. Consequently, there must be a way to remove energy from the grid when it exceeds its upper capacity threshold. This is where hydro power comes in. Due to the fact that this plant has a higher lake and a lower lake, the excess energy in the grid can be used to pump water back up into the top lake, resetting the energy from kinetic (the energy gathered from the spinning of the turbines from the downward motion of the water form the top lake to the bottom lake) to potential energy. This plant is important because it can switch from using turbines to generate energy to using the pumps to extract energy back from the grid in only 10 minutes due to the ultra efficient design.

A game demonstrating how the power plant balances inputting and removing energy from the grid

The pipes that carry water to and from the two lakes

The turbine room. Yea, we were also not expecting it to be this minimalistic.

We finished our tour with looking at some beautiful minerals such as rose fluorite, calcite, and quartz that were found on the tunnel as they were blowing it out with dynamite for the roadway.  The first bit was in glass cases along the road and the rest remained in tact where it was found in a huge crystal cavern that is now protected by the state as a national treasure.  We then descended back down the windy road back to where we met and said our goodbyes.

Walkway displaying various crystals found in the blasting of the tunnel

A glimpse into the crystal cavern filled primarily with huge quartz

Although the tour guide seemed confident that the hydroelectric companies would be able to continue sustaining the demand placed upon them by the electrical grid for the near future, he did seem uncertain about the far future when the glaciers are truly gone. He commented on the fact that there would be significantly less water input. Despite that this plant is able to pump water back up into the higher lake, storing it again as potential energy, they loose 25% of the initial energy output, so this would not be a sustainable situation if there was not ample input from a glacier and/or precipitation. The other crisis he said they will have to face is rock falls. As the glacier retreats, it exposes rock faces which become increasingly unstable causing a higher frequency of rock slides. This poses problems because the rocks displace water as they crash downwards that could potentially overwhelm the dam. Although these risks exist, they are still constructing a new dam to replace an old one, and this dam is expected to last at least a century. We all wondered at the wisdom of this choice, but even when we pressed for answers about what would happen in a situation where the region became completely deglaciated and precipitation was not sufficient to replace the water removed from the lake, we didn’t receive a clear answer, or any answer at all really. Left to my own opinions on the matter, the continued development of hydroelectric plants in watersheds that will become deglaciated in the relatively near future is something that seems unwise, but we are leaving ourselves without many other options for energy sources. Switzerland already uses hydroelectric energy to power 60% of its grid, and they have already begun decommissioning their nuclear power plants. And so the question remains: as demand for energy increases, how will this demand be met once we have depleted our more renewable options such as glaciers? It would seem that we just don’t really know. 

 

 

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