Umspannwerk Recklinghausen e.V.

Description

The listed Recklinghausen substation houses Museum Zeitreise Strom – Das Deutsche Elektrizitätsmuseum. The facility belongs to the energy supplier RWE (formerly VEW), today Westnetz, and has served as a museum site since December 2000. The building is one of the largest electricity museums in Germany and is part of the Route der Industriekultur in the Ruhrgebiet.

The switchgear was completed for the Vereinigten Elektrizitätswerke Westfalen on 17 February 1928. The decision to house the technical units within an enclosed building was based on local environmental conditions: the Emscher and the Rhine–Herne Canal run directly nearby, making fog and increased humidity at the insulators likely. Together with soot and coal dust from the hard-coal mines, this could have promoted short circuits. Disconnectors, load switches, instrument transformers and transformers were therefore protected inside the building. The installation converted a high voltage of 110 kV into a 10 kV distribution medium voltage.

In the course of a modernization of the switchgear, freed-up space was created; a new annex provided room for the then Museum Strom und Leben and for the company archive. The exhibition explains the history of electricity from its beginnings, such as the discovery of galvanic electricity by Alessandro Volta, to its present-day use in households and industry. The collection includes numerous exhibits and advertising materials from the early years of the 20th century. Notable objects include façade elements from the Gemeinschaftswerk Hattingen, whose coal-fired power station, decommissioned in 1984, bore portraits of the VEW supervisory board members on its façade. Electric cars are also displayed. In October 2021 the former Museum Strom und Leben was expanded with an exhibition section on the future of electricity in the former control room and renamed Zeitreise Strom – Das Deutsche Elektrizitätsmuseum. The corporate archive of RWE Westfalen-Weser-Ems AG is also housed in the building.