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World’s First Ski Lift Powered by the Sun

Tenna, a farming village in eastern Switzerland has a population of about 112. As the mayor, Thomas Buchli, told Michele Andina of SwissInfo.ch in a video interview recently, “When it was time to restore the old lift, we thought we could run it on solar power since we already have a lot of solar panels on the roofs our our stables.” Clearly they’re not your average farming community.

The lift, which began operating in mid-December, is named “Small is beautiful” as it stands at a mere 450 meters long. This lift was designed to address a key challenge: There wasn’t enough room on the lift station roof for all the solar panels they needed. To solve this, they designed a suspension bridge of solar panel “wings” above the lift. The panels rotate to follow the sun and can be tilted to release snow if they start to get covered.

Although there were concerns that suspension ropes laden with 82 “wings” would appear abrasive against the snowy mountain landscape, the setup turned out to be fairly subtle with the panels hanging at slight angles.

The lift stays busy, shuttling 800 skiers an hour, writes Adventure Journal’s Michael Frank. On sunny days, the lift produces twice as much power as it consumes, according to Andina. The lift is expected to produce 90,000 kilowatt hours annually — well beyond the 21,000 kilowatt hours needed to run it during the season. In time, this small lift will make up for the initial $1.5 million investment.

Source: Discovery, Solar Lift Tenna

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March 13th, 2012 by signaltree
Posted in Architectual |
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