Solbergfoss power station, Hydroelectric power station on Glomma river, Indre Østfold Municipality, Norway
Solbergfoss is a run-of-the-river power station on the Glomma river in Indre Østfold Municipality, Norway, made up of two separate plants that use different types of turbines. A gravity dam is part of the installation and holds back the river water across the full width of the channel.
Construction started in 1913 and the project was at that point the largest hydropower undertaking ever attempted in Norway. Its completion showed that the country had the capacity to carry out major industrial work on a scale not seen before.
The building was designed by architect Bredo Greve, who gave the structure a deliberate architectural form unusual for industrial facilities of that era. Walking around it today, visitors can see how the design treated a working power plant as something worth looking at carefully.
The station stands on the bank of the Glomma and can be reached from the surrounding area of Indre Østfold without much difficulty. As it is an active industrial site, access is limited and safety areas around the machinery and dam must be respected.
Before construction began, engineers built a scale model of the whole facility at 1:25 in Nordmarka, near Oslo, to test building methods in advance. This kind of testing on such a large model was not a common practice for industrial projects of that size at the time.
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