Chivilingo hydro plant

Chivilingo is part of a historical – tourist complex, The complex is an icon in a region facing a severe economic recession, after the closing of the Lota coal mines. Ironically, the mines were closed in May 1997, a hundred years after the Chivilingo plant was inaugurated.

Visitors can accede to a tour were the operation of the plant is explained.

The Director of the Fundación Chile project is Mr. Mario Hermosilla

Which are the significant dates for Chivilingo?

Studies on the feasibility of building a hydro plant in the site were initiated in 1893. The increasing need for power that was cheaper and easily adapted to mine underground use drove the Lota coal mine company to develop a study of alternatives for this purpose. Engineer William E. Raby traveled to the United States and Europe to assess the use of electricity generation and transmission. The availability of the Chivilingo hydro resources arose as a better alternative to a steam plant. Electricity for driving motors for coal mine exploitation under the sea had many advantages over other sources of power (coal included). Alternating current to feed three phase motors was seen as the most economic, easily managed, and less prone to accidents, solution for work power inside the mines.

An international tender was made, with proposals requested to the main US and Germany consultant firms, for both the hydraulic and electric installations. Total freedom was given in relation to power transmission system to be used. A Pelton turbine was specified as a requirement. The civil works and the aqueduct were to be built by the Lota company.

Work to build the Chivilingo power station started in 1896 and it was inaugurated in 1897. It was the first hydroelectric power plant in Chile and the second in South America.

Thomas A. Edison supposedly designed the plant. The North American company Consolidated Co. built it and the electrical equipment was provided by Schuckert & Co., from Nürnberg, Germany.

The "El Sur" newspaper brought the news to all of Chile and helped to inform other countries in the region.

The plant was in operation for 78 years (from 1897 to 1975), in its later years interconnected to the main Chilean Central Interconnected System.

Chivilingo was declared a historical monument by the government of Chile on 25 October 1990, and published in the Official Gazettte (Diario Oficial) Number 33837 on 6 December 1990.

What were the advantages for electricity for coal mine exploitation?

A 1987 report by the engineer in charge of the Chivilingo project, included in the Anales del Instituto de Ingeniería, Tomo XII, 15 November 1897, Nº82, indicates: "For the special conditions in which the mine steam and air compressed motors operate, it is impossible to apply the last advances in the matter. It must necessarily be very uneconomic in their operation. It is not, since, exaggerated to calculate coal consumption in 10 kilos per hour for each horsepower. Accepting this number, it is easy to calculate the fuel economy that will have the Lota Company with the new installation. It would mean for a power of 500 horses, a saving of 28800 annual tons, estimating in 20 the workdays to the month. One must take into account, furthermore, the facilities that gives this class of power for the exploitation, economizing arms, horses, etc."

What is the historical significance of the plant?

The Lota coal mines

Lota, the coal town that gave birth to Chivilingo, is an old mining village located 9 km. south of the city of Coronel, Chile. It was founded on October 12, 1662 by the Spanish Governor Angel de Peredo, with the name Santa María de Guadalupe. Its name was later changed to Lota, that origins in the Araucanian word Louta, meaning small village. Initially, it depended mainly on agriculture, but with the development of the industrial revolution, in mid nineteenth century, productive activity turned to coal mining. The village grew and on the 5th of January 1875, Lota was declared as a city.

The exploitation of coal took a dramatic change, when Mr. Matías Cousiño purchased in 1852 the lands where later he would establish the coal industry. It is through the drive of the Cousiño family that Lota became renown nationally and internationally as a pole of economic development.

The coal mines stimulated economic development in the entire region and gave origin to other villages and cities, such as Coronel and Curanilahue.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the port of Lota was one of the most important ones in the southern cone of South America, exporting coal to North America and Europe. The decline of steam ship navigation was the beginning of the end for the city and its surroundings.

The State took control of the mines and created ENACAR (Empresa Nacional del Carbón), but it was unfeasible to keep coal mining. The Lota coal mine goes several miles under the sea and its production costs, plus the low heat quality of its coal, made it impossible to compete with open pit coal brought from other parts of the country or abroad. With pain, the decision was to finally close the mines in 1997, a hundred and fifty years since exploitation began and a hundred years after Chivilingo was inaugurated.

Lota today struggles, with the support of the government and the private sector, to live without its coal production. A severe economic recession strikes the city, with high unemployment, where most of the population is young (between 0 and 29 years old).

Lota is looking for alternatives, where tourism (Chivilingo being a main attraction), forestry and timber, port services and micro companies arise as paths for development.

The Chivilingo plant

The mining entrepreneurs in Latin America perceived early the advantages that were offering electricity as a source of energy for the extractive tasks. Therefore, the first electricity generating plants in the region (Argentina, Brazil and Chile) were built to supply mining activities. Steam plants were first installed, but in a region abundant in hydro resources, the clear step was to build hydroelectric plants. Chivilingo was the first hydroelectric plant built in Chile, and had as a goal to supply energy to the Lota coal mines.

The Exploitation Company of Lota and Coronel, - succeeding to the Cousiño and Sons Society -, convinced of the advantages of taking advantage of the water falls of the Chivilingo river to generate this new form of energy, presented a proposal to build a central. It was awarded to the North American company Consolidated Co. The use of electricity in the mining tunnels required of large transformers, which along with the rest of the electricity equipment, were entrusted to a German company, Schuckert & Co., from Nürnberg, Germany. Carlos Cousiño was the man behind the project. The system entered functions in 1897.

A description written at the time gives more details of Chivilingo. It had two Pelton turbines, provided with two alternators of 215 kilowatts each (315-horse power, 400 volts, and 360 amperes, 50 Hz). Energy was transmitted through a 10 kV line of 10 kilometers, that lead to the Lota coal mines. In the mineral there were several substations that transformed and distributed the electricity that moved pumps and extraction machines. It provided essential power to the railway that transported the minerals that went underground until a depth of 12 kilometers under the sea.

The plant, besides providing electric energy to the mines, which were the basis of regional economic development, fed the city of Lota. It also made possible the development of other industries in the region. That was a common practice in those years, as many towns and cities used the energy that was left from industrial plants and mines.

To prevent problems with lack of water in the summer, a thermal generation plant was installed in 1908.

The significance of Chivilingo has several dimensions:

- Technological: being the first hydroelectric plant of Chile and the second in South America. Chivilingo demonstrated the advantages of hydro-based electricity generation in a region with important hydro resources. An ambitious plan to survey the Chilean hydro potential was taken over later and major power plants have been built, and continue to be built; making the Chilean Interconnected System a hydro based system. Chivilingo also demonstrated how technology could drive social and economic development. It must be added that not only the plant itself was significant, but also the high voltage10 kV line that transmitted the energy to the mine. The availability of lines that could transmit at high voltages was also fundamental in the increasing use of far away hydro resources.

- Economically: as its provision of cheaper energy helped to improve coal mining, contributed to the economic development of the region and had an impact elsewhere, by providing abundant and cheaper coal (and energy) worldwide, for over a century.

- Social: by feeding the Lota city and its surroundings, by providing better living conditions and by helping the development of other industries.

- National: by supporting the development of Lota and its coal mines, it was a fundamental factor for making Chile a more industrial society .

Even today, with Chivilingo not generating energy any more, the plant has much significance, as indicated above. It is one of three major elements of a drive to convert the area in an important tourist attraction. Other central tourist attractions in the area are the coal mines themselves (the "Chiflón del Diablo") and the Isidora Cousiño botanical park, showing the strong European influence of the time.

International support (mainly Italian and Spanish) has added to Chilean government and private support in an ambitious program for a cultural, productive and social reconversion of the city. The actions not only try to create new employment options, but emphasize the recovery and appraisement of the historical and cultural patrimony of this mining city, as a way to pay tribute to those that lived and died in the coal industry, and a way to perpetuate for future generations the significant milestones of the regional history, Chivilingo being one of them.

An energy museum is being built along the Chivilingo plant, as a way to emphasize the way technology can support social and economic development.

Chile is full of historical, natural, ethnic and cultural patrimonies, but often, because of carelessness they deteriorate, or social conflicts prevent their recovery as patrimonies for society. The challenge in Lota, Chivilingo included, is that the recovery and appraisement of them from the tourist point of view, becomes also a factor of economic development.

On another dimension, Chivilingo was a first example of the leadership by Chilean engineers in the development of electricity in South America. The Chilean State company Endesa, created in the 1940's, was a leader in the region in hydroelectric expansion, and advised countries around in the development of their electrical sectors. Later on, in 1982, Chilean engineers implemented the first electricity market deregulation process in the world, devising a model that was later to be followed by most countries in the region. An article in the August 1996 IEEE Spectrum describes this process, and mentions the Chivilingo plant ("Pioneering electricity reform in South America", IEEE Spectrum, August 1996, pp. 38-44)..

Why did Chivilingo demonstrated then the advantages of hydro-based electricity generation?

The previously quoted 1987 report arguments the following: "With the numerous plentiful rivers that cross Chile from the mountain chain to the sea; the inexhaustible force stored in the same mountain chain in the form of snow; the large differences of level that can be obtained in those mountains for hydraulic companies; and the short distance that there is in all the extension of Chile of those force springs to the industrial centers, makes to conceive the hope that someday cities will be totally lit by electricity; the vehicles of all classes dragged by that force; and its railways, mines and industries moved by the same power. Undoubtedly, the hydraulic force in combination with electricity, will have a great future in the country the day in which its inhabitants and the government devote to it the attention it deserves, and do not occupy themselves of other matter, than the predominance of political parties and personal ambitions, that corrupt and damage all".

Why was it done at that particular time?

Electricity generation started in Chile in 1882, with the creation of the first lighting company in the country (only a year after the English town of Godalming and the same year the Pearl Street Station was operational in New York).

In 1883, three steam engines drove seven generators to feed lights in the shopping area around the Plaza de Armas, the main square in Santiago.

The first experiences with electrical energy had a demonstrative and temporal character. They responded to the interests of entrepreneurs for this new form of energy that was developing worldwide. The same discussions about the advantages of gas and electricity that took place abroad also took place in Chile.

But it was not until the early 1890’s that the use of electric energy in the country became stable and permanent, mainly driven by its use in urban transport. In January 1893 a request was presented to the government, supported by engineering studies, to establish an electrical tramway in the city of Santiago. In 1897 the first tramway and light company was created in Santiago. It was originally owned by British investors that later transferred them to German ones.

These developments led to the building of thermal electric plants. Often, it was German engineering, German standards and German machinery that drove the developments in the country.

As indicated earlier, use of electricity for light and transport were soon followed by use in the mining industry, particularly in the coal mines in Lota.

With Chilean developments closely following what were happening in Europe and the USA, one could deduct that the 1895 Niagara Falls plant success, with its alternating current and its 20 mile transmission line, did influence developments in the region.

Who commissioned the plant and how was it financed?

During the decade of the 1850s, most of the young Latin American countries began to experience a deep change in their economic structures. That took place as a logic response to the growing expansion of the world trade, that would carry to a division increasingly defined between industrialized countries and raw materials producing countries. Thus, while countries as Argentina, Brazil or Uruguay converted almost exclusively to exporters of agricultural products, other countries such as Chile and Mexico were depending economically on their mineral product exports. At the same time, the industrial production did not grow to become the effective motor of the development of these countries.

Therefore, the reasons behind the development of Chivilingo root in that mineral product exports.

The exploitation of coal in Chile started in the 19th century in the area of Talcahuano, responding to the requirements of the first steam boats.

In 1842, William Wheelwright started the first mining exploitations in Talcahuano. But it was Mr. Matías Cousiño who was the driver to transform the exploitation into a rational industrial machine-driven process, replacing an artisan-like process. Mr. Cousiño hired in 1852 an English engineer, Mr. William W. Stephenson, who performed a study that determined the vast coal reserves of the area and the possibility to extract it, without danger, from under the sea. English and Scottish practitioners where brought to Chile in 1856 to train local agricultural workers into mining skills. Given the character of the coalmines, industrial towns formed next to the mines, where workers lived with their families.

The exploitation schemes suffered a radical change. While before 1860, horse-driven carriages were used to extract coal from tunnels under the sea, Cousiño, with the support of European mining experts, dramatically changed the technology. Steam engines were installed for extraction and ventilation, with railway lines built within the mines and outside, towards the shipping docks.

This evolution lead to an explosive growth of the mines in the Lota area. The Exploitation Company of Lota and Coronel (Compañía Explotadora de Lota y Coronel; it used that name from 1870 to 1904), successor of the Society Cousiño and Sons (1857-1869) employed 2200 workers in 1882 in seven mines under the sea.

This search for new technologies to improve the mining process continued as an urgent requirement. In 1893, the company asked the Head Engineer, Mr. William Raby, to study the advantages of using electricity in coal mining. Electricity had already been used in Chile since 1882, mainly in lighting and urban transport, but it was the mining industry that was to make the most significant contribution. Mr. Raby clearly identified the advantages of using the waterfalls of the Chivilingo river to generate electricity, as indicated before.

Therefore, convinced of its benefits, it was the Compañía Explotadora de Lota y Coronel who commissioned the plant and fully financed it.

Why was the Schuckert company from Nürnberg, Germany, chosen to provide the electrical equipment?

After a project to use the Chivilingo resources was developed, requests for bids were made to the main providers from the United States and Germany.

The Chilean electricity development closely followed what was happening in Europe and the US. For example, the light system of the main port, Valparaiso, was fed in 1893 by generators and networks provided by the Berlin company Siemens & Halske (with German engineers working closely with Chilean engineers in the process). The English company Parrish Brothers started in 1897 providing a tramway service in Santiago.

The Chivilingo project was assigned to the US company Consolidated Co. The electrical equipment was assigned to the Nuremberg company Schuckert and Co. No information is available on the reasons for this decision, but it is important to indicate that this German company had already demonstrated its capabilities elsewhere (in 1892 it was awarded the contract for South Africa's first hydro electric power station at Molteno Reservoir, Cape Town).

Schuckert & Co, from 1893 "Elektrizitäts Aktiengesellschaft vorm. Schuckert & Co.", was founded in 1873 by the entrepreneur Sigmund Schuckert. This company in a few years evolved from a small establishment specialized in high quality reflectors manufacturing to one of the largest German companies producing electrical equipment, with a good gained international prestige. During the years 1880 to 1890, Schuckert & Co. represented a serious competition to Siemens & Halske and AEG, mainly in the manufacturing of dynamos and arch lamps and in the construction of electrical plants, activity in which its volume of business surpassed widely to that of its two rivals.

What influence did Chivilingo have on further power developments in Chile?

The electricity developments in Chile followed, as indicated before, the requirements imposed by light, transport and mining use.

The electricity expansion in Chile until the First World War was important although quite diverse, with DC and AC supplies coexisting, 50 and 60 Hz equipment depending if it was European or North American. Voltages varied from 550V, 7kV, 10kV, 12kV, 110kV, etc. There was no coordination as the electricity systems developed without regulation, around towns and industrial sites.

The development was experimental and successes with new technologies influenced what came after. The Chivilingo plant and its success was widely publicized in the country by the Instituto de Ingenieros de Chile and the press.

The German company Compañía Alemana Transatlántica de Electricidad (Deutsche Überseeische Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft), aware of the Chivilingo plant, decided to use German technology and build two new hydroelectric plants. They were El Sauce in 1908, with 4 MW (feeding from the Peñuelas reservoir in Valparaiso) and La Florida in 1909 with 15 MW (next to Santiago). That company was also present with electricity developments in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

A similar development was stimulated in other mining sites. The nitrate industry in the north of the country, learning of the success of Chivilingo, also looked at hydroelectricity as a source of power. In 1904 the Compañía Salitrera Tocopilla built the Sloman reservoir in the Loa river, with a hydro plant with technology from Schuckert.

In 1905, an electricity company was formed, Compañía General de Electricidad (CGEI), to supply the south of the country. In 1910 it had developed three hydro plants: Piduco (200 kW), Lircay (1300 kW) and Maule (400 kW).

The copper mining also introduced hydro generation, this time lead by US investors. The Braden Copper Company, owner of the El Teniente copper mines, built the Coya plant which was operational in 1912 with 6 MW. The US technology started to influence strongly the electrification process in the country.

Sources of information

Villalobos, Sergio, "Historia de la Ingeniería en Chile", Hachete, 1989 (complete history of engineering in Chile, describing, among other subjects, the development of the electricity supply)

Nahm, Gerardo, "Las inversiones extranjeras y la transferencia de tecnología entre Europa y América Latina: el ejemplo de las grandes compañías eléctricas alemanas en Argentina", Scripta Nova, Revista Electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Barcelona, Nº 1, march 1997.

Anales del Instituto de Ingenieros de Chile, 1897 article describing the conception and development of the project.

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