Wine-powered hydro electricity on a big scale in the Mosel / Moselle valley
Baspie dog and I were awestruck by the size and age of the hydropower plant we spotted whilst cycling by the Mosel.
Massive Kaplan screws placed vertically. We are more used to Archimedes screws, at a slight angle.They built them big in the 1950’s all down the river Mosel, some with more familiar turbine orientation.The left hand side is the power plant (fish pass obscured by the trees), middle is the water busting out under the raised one of the two massive sluice gates. To the right is the embankment of the lock system.
They built this hydro 60 years before Reading Hydro. Takes a maximum of 450 cumecs of water. Wow. I wonder if the local wine helped them in their fearlessness?
The power is generated by 4 huge vertical shaft Kaplan turbines. There’s an overhead gantry with a building on top that runs on rails across the dam, to be able to lift up each turbine for maintenance and repair.
The covers of the four turbine shafts, with the wheeled gantry house in the distance, and the rails it is on running towards you. The awesome, if ugly, huge eel pass even has a museum built on top of it. Designed in 2009, the museum has scaly skin.Little steps in a zig zag, for slow swimming fish like eels to wind their way up, bypassing the weir and turbines.When one huge lock isn’t enough, build two.The upstream entrances to the locksTiny railway dog on the huge footpath over the hydro and weir. He knows about hydro. He helped build one in Reading.
Clearance Team Tools
There’s more for the hydro nerds amongst you. Look at this for trash screen clearance:
“It’s the claw!” Grabbers grab the trash. One from the screens onto a conveyor, this one mucks about with it once gathered.Upstream side of the power plant. There’s a rail along under those windows that a digger grabber runs along to clear trash. In the foreground is a visiting dog who’s not so excited.
Such an interesting structure, I like it. I am from America, in the northeast, I have not seen these places in person. Thank you for sharing this, this was really cool! Alternative energy is the way to go.
Railway Dog 
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