Ski Lift Running on Solar Power

Pablo Escobar wrote:Not when the ladies are old enough to be my Mother/potentially Grandmother

Ah, the impudence of yoof. Every generation, just like the last

AFAIK Tenna is in Graubunden Canton

I still haven't been able to find anything out about Tenna as a ski resort. It must be a really tiny one, and I don't get why they'd go to the enormous expensive of installing a solar powered drag lift.

Ally

AllyG wrote:I still haven't been able to find anything out about Tenna as a ski resort. It must be a really tiny one, and I don't get why they'd go to the enormous expensive of installing a solar powered drag lift.

Ally

The article says that the panels will provide enough energy to power the lifts (ie. extremely low cost energy,only really the initial capital payment) and any excess will be sold back to the grid.

Still not totally convinced that you have read through it

you just have to love how the swiss like to thinker with things lol

Though it does seem like a lot of money to spend on just a drag lift, how long is the drag lift

Imagine this scenario: Its dumping, all the t-bars are full with skiers and all the solar panels are snow covered with little sun light penetrating the storm clouds. How long before the lift grinds to a stop?

DanoT wrote:Imagine this scenario: Its dumping, all the t-bars are full with skiers and all the solar panels are snow covered with little sun light penetrating the storm clouds. How long before the lift grinds to a stop?

Most systems like this are still connected to the regular utility power supply. That way, they get credit for power they feed back into the system, and have power available when their demand is greater that the solar system can supply.

My local hill buys wind generated power. That doesn't really mean that the electricity they use is produced by windmills, but that they pay the higher price that wind generated power cost.

Wow this is incredible

The solar powered lift is also fairly cool.

Has anyone managed to understand the German in the video yet?

I still don't think it's a financially viable project. I mean, according to the article the solar panels are producing 90,000 kWh, the lift/s are using 66,000 kWh, so they only have 24,000 kWh spare to sell. Supposing they only got 10 pence per unit (kW) for this, they'd only get £2,400 from selling the surplus back to the grid.

And even this doesn't make sense, because I would have thought these were only the winter figures and they'd have a lot more to sell back in the summer, because I don't imagine the drag lift would be working.

Anyway, I don't know how much that fancy set up is costing the lift company, but I bet it's a huge pile of money because not only are solar panels very expensive, but also they've got to have extra strong pylons holding up the lift because the panels are so heavy, and they've got that very clever mechanism to tilt the panels over which would have to be maintained as well.

So, unless they're getting a huge 'green' subsidy in some way, such as a much higher price for the electricity they sell back to the grid, a large grant or an interest free loan, I don't see how it can pay for itself at all, or indeed where they're getting the money to pay for it in the first place.

I mean, drag lifts are cheap to run. So that a 50 kW one at 10 pence per kW would only cost £5 an hour to run.

I am all in favour of environmentally friendly improvements in ski resorts (and everywhere else) but this does seem more like a publicity stunt. I reckon they'd do more to look after the environment and conserve energy if they did something very simple like put thermostats in all the individual rooms in hotels, chalets and apartments. We had to leave our window open all night in our apartment in Courchevel because there was no way of turning the heating down and we were roasting hot.

I had a look on the internet and apparently PV solar panels require 1000 kW hours of energy to manufacture each metre squared of panel (although I believe this figure is reducing), so it would probably be several years before they even 'paid back' the energy used to manufacture them.

Ally