Westerholt Power Station

300 m (1000 ft) tall smokestack of Westerholt Power Station
Chimney of Westerholt Power Station a few days before demolition

Westerholt Power Station was a coal fired power station in Gelsenkirchen-Westerholt, Germany. The power plant consisted of two units built in the 1960s, each capable of producing 150 MW of electricity. Its smokestack, built in 1981, was over 300 metres (1000 feet) tall, making it Germany's tallest chimney at the time.

The power station was decommissioned on May 13, 2005. The chimney was demolished on Sunday, December 3, 2006, at 10:53 a.m.

The height of the smokestack, 300 metres, has been confirmed by the former operator of the power plant, E.ON Kraftwerke.

It was the tallest structure in North Rhine-Westphalia. Before its erection the Wesel transmitter tower took this claim. After the demolition of the chimney, the Wesel tower once again became the tallest structure in North Rhine-Westphalia.

A district heating plant, "FWK Westerholt", has been in operation on this site since the spring of 2004. There are six boilers there to provide heat for the district heating network of the northern Ruhr Area.

The Westerholt coal mine is located only a few hundred metres away. Both the power plant and the mine are on the city limits of Gelsenkirchen in the Hassel neighborhood and were named for the contiguous (and at that time still independent) city of Westerholt in what was then the district of Recklinghausen (today the city is a part of the city of Herten and is named "Herten-Westerholt").

See also

Coordinates: 51°36′04″N 7°03′50″E / 51.60111°N 7.06389°E / 51.60111; 7.06389

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