The Power Station

The power station is one of many small hydro-electric plants that were built around the country around 1900.

The power station is located just above the Town and north of the Residential Area in the open-air museum.

It was established at Anderkvern in Moelv in 1899 to provide power for the factory Moelven Brug.

From a canal in Moelva the water was channeled through a pipe to a turbine down in the power station. The drop was 12.5 metres (41 feet). The current of the water made the turbine wheel rotate. During the first years the rotational energy was used purely mechanically, with transmission by wires and shafts to machines up in the factory. A dynamo provided electricity for lighting.

The change from mechanical to electric power for the machines happened in 1914. At that time the power station got a generator, a machine which transformed the energy from the turbine to electricity. At the same time the factory was modernised with cables and electric motors.

At Maihaugen, the power station has been restored as it was when it was taken out of operation in the 1980s. Here you can see the machines that went on and on in all those years.

The turbine is from 1914, the generator probably from 1938. On the control panel next to it, there are instruments to see that everything works and to start and stop. The sound of machines and the smell of oil gives an experience of what it may have been like here when the plant was up and running.

In the power station you can also learn more about how the waterfalls in the Mesna River in Lillehammer were used for electricity production from 1894.