Temesvár vízerőműve, működő műszaki műemlékünk - Jancsó, Árpád (Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2010)
The city on the Bega River can show its pride, among other things, in its many industrial monuments, witnesses of the economic boom it experienced between the end of the XIXth and the beginning of the XXth. Those industrial traces are as important as the fortresses, the palaces, the castles, the churches and the monasteries of the area, because they illustrate, too the result of the work, the sacrifices and the aspirations of the communities to which they belonged.A pearl of industrial archaeology is the hydroelectric power station from Timişoara, known among the inhabitants by the name "The Turbins". She will be, on the 3rd of May 2010, a hundred years old.The Bega River harnessing was begun in 1728, but only at the beginning of the XXth century it was fully transformed in a modern navigable canal, with a length of 120 km.
and six hydro-technical knots (pound locks) (dam, lock [10].In the territory of the Timişoara/Temesvár city, Bega River was schemed for modern navigation up to the Fabric neighborhood, where the waters of the river spread in multiple canals and branches. The weirs were used to ensure the water chute for moving the wheels of watermills. Eight such watermills were in the property of the city and their lease brought a solid income to the city’s budget.But, at the end of the XIXth century the watermills’ mechanical efficiency was lower than those of the new steam-engine mills. The city administration decided to use the water energy more efficiently through the building of a hydroelectric power station.
There were also in plan: the draining of the Fabric/Gyárváros neighborhood, the lowering the level of the phreatic waters, the elimination of the channels that transformed this neighborhood in Timişoara’s own Venice, the building of a new canalized river bed that would allow the access upstream of the biggest barges standardized for the navigation on the interior rivers. The building of a hydroelectric power station, through which it will be "exploited much more efficiently the energy of the Bega’s waters", was decided by the Town Council. The large scale project of urban planning – important due to both architectural and public health issues – of eliminating the old streams and canals that spread in the Fabric neighborhood and the building of the hydroelectric power station was made by Timişoara/Temesvár’s engineerin-chief, Emil Szilárd.
In the chapter dedicated to the expense-income issue, the engineer-in-chief demonstrated that, by the construction of a hydroelectric power station simultaneously with to draining of the neighborhood, this large investment of city planning will pay-off very quickly.Timişoara was a pioneer in this field, because the building of hydroelectric power stations was at its earliest stages across Europe. The first hydroelectric power stations were erected in the last decades of the XIXth century.
Between 1893 and 1911, in what was then Hungary, 39 hydroelectric power stations were build for public use, out of which, the ones from Târgu Mureş/Marosvásárhely and Timişoara/Temesvár had an installed power of over 1000 HP.On the nowadays territory of Romania, the hydroelectric power station from Timişoara is the first a hydroelectric power station of the type dam – power station (hydroelectric dam).The hydroelectric power station, "built by the most modern knowledge", was planned to be erected in the eastern edge of the city, the area where the Bega River, coming from the Ghiroda village enters Timişoara/Temesvár’s territory. Downstream from the hydroelectric power station, engineer-in-chief Szilárd envisaged the digging of a new canalized riverbed, 2400 m in length, and with a transversal section large enough to ensure a large flow of water. After the end of the works, the level of the Bega canal became lower with 4,40 m.