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The thermal power station Regina Margherita is a large power station for the production of electricity, preserved at the Museo nazionale della scienza e della tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci in Milan, Italy. The station was opened in 1895 and was originally installed in the silk factory Egidio e Pio Gavazzi in Desio (Milan), where it operated until 1954. It supplied electric current for lighting and operation of 1,800 looms, generating alternating electric current at a voltage of 200 V.
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History
Designed at the Polytechnic University of Milan, it was built by combining a steam engine from the company Franco Tosi of Legnano and a pair of alternators from the Brown Boveri company.
The opening of the power station took place on November 9, 1895; the ceremony was attended by King Umberto I and Margherita of Savoy to which the plant was dedicated.
It was installed in the workshops of the Company Egidio e Pio Gavazzi in Desio (Milan). In addition to ensuring the supply of electricity for the lighting of the factory, it operated up to 1800 silk looms.
Musealization
In 1958 the company Egidio e Pio Gavazzi proposed to donate the power plant to the Museo nazionale della scienza e della tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci. In order to exhibit the large machine, the floor was demolished, a stronger basement was built to support the item and the technical press consultation room was moved. Then the plant was dismantled in Desio using the maintenance cranes and it was transported with a Riva lorry to the Museum where it was reassembled by hand and connected to an electric motor, coupled with a reduction gear, to set it in motion. In fact, the furnace and boiler, with their connected steam distribution pipes and pumps, were not transferred to the Museum.
Description
The station contains two parts: a thermal part consisting of a steam engine with two horizontal cylinders, and an electric part consisting of two alternators and two exciter dynamos. There is also an electric control panel and a lighting system with 8 lamps.
Originally the machine was equipped with two elements, no longer present in the museum setting: a boiler to produce steam, and a device for steam distribution in the cylinders. Since its musealization, the machine is activated by an electric motor, which has been connected to it by the chain which encircles the pulley, and it no longer produces current.
Technique
This machine is an example of a compound steam engine.
Although it relied on the finest nineteenth-century technologies, the "Regina Margherita" was not a cutting-edge piece of machinery. Ten years before its making, the Englishman Sir Charles Algernon Parsons had already invented the steam turbine. In this latter device the steam force acts directly on the blades of the wheel, producing the rotation necessary for the operation of the alternators. The steam turbine is more efficient than a cylinder and piston system because it reduces the waste of energy deriving from the transformation of alternating motion into rotary motion and from the transmission of movement through connecting rods, cranks and belts.