The functioning of the new hydroelectric power plant in Veytaux is being studied in the machine hall of the EPFL Hydraulic Constructions Laboratory (LCH) on a 1:30 scale model. It's no small challenge! The availability of electricity is a pressing social issue, as the recent energy debates show. Fifty-seven percent of the electrical energy produced in Switzerland is hydraulically generated. The pumped storage system used by FMHL (Forces Motrices Hongrin-Léman) makes it possible to store energy, produced for example from wind turbines and solar sources, like a battery. Thus when the energy demand is low, the Veytaux power plant pumps the water from Lake Geneva to the Hongrin reservoir where it is temporarily stored in order to be reversed later by turbines to produce the electricity when the demand rises. The new power plant Veytaux 2 will enable the power of the existing installation to be doubled from 240 to 480 megawatts. To fit this new underground power plant, with a volume equivalent to Lausanne cathedral (140,000 m3) into the existing system, it was essential to study the functioning of the hydraulic circuit downstream using a physical model.
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