Ski Lift Running on Solar Power

I got an e-mail back from myswitzerland.com. This is what it said:

We thank you for your request.

Please contact directly Safiental tourism office for that question.

http://www.safiental.ch/index.cfm?id=55

The site is only in German.

I have sent them an e-mail instead, but I'm not sure I've sent it to the right place, because the website is indeed all in German :roll:

If anyone is interested, we have a new green subsidy scheme here which applies to solar electricity and I am trying to work it out. Apparently the energy companies will pay 41.3 pence per unit for energy produced in this way (Feed-in Tariffs), even if we use it ourselves, and if we sell it back to the grid we get another 3 pence per unit on top of that, for a guaranteed period of 25 years. It seems this will pay for the panels and the installation in about 6 years. But there must be a snag to this somewhere. It sounds much too good to be true. I will do some more research.

Ally

Hello everybody, I apologise in advance for the length of this my first post here, but as there seems to be considerable interest in Tenna's new solar ski lift http://www.solarskilift.ch/index.php I thought you might like some further information.

Tenna http://www.tenna.ch/index.php is a small village with 109 inhabitants located in the Safien valley http://www.safiental.ch/ in the Canton of Grissons in south east Switzerland. As it has only the one ski lift it can't really be considered to be a ski resort. The solar powered ski lift is to replace the current one that was bought second hand 40 years ago which has to be replaced as there are no longer any spare parts for the gearbox http://www.solarskilift.ch/katalog_detail.php?auswahl=8&idp=2

The design of the solar module tracking system is based on research carried out by Prof Franz Baumgartner at Zurich University https://home.zhaw.ch/~bauf/ The solar modules are manufactured by Solar Wings AG info@solar-wings.li using solar panels manufactured by Sunways AG http://www.sunways.eu/en/ The lift and solar module cable system are being built by Bartholet Maschinenbau AG (BMF) http://www.bmf-ag.ch/ with design and engineering work being carried out by PAMAG Engineering AG http://www.pamag.ch/index.php This document (in English) gives an overview of the system http://www.bmf-ag.ch/media/SolarWings.pdf

Although most of the web sites listed above are in German it should be possible for non German speakers to get some information from them using Google translate http://translate.google.com/#

Now, I had wondered about this being a little local hill. In which case the whole solar thing makes great sense. Big resorts don't do it cos they don't need to. This seems to be a wise investment as it should pay back at some point and potentially allow further investment.

Thanks SwingBeep,
That was very helpful. Are you connected with Tenna, or the Swiss tourist information office? I sent a couple of e-mails explaining that we were discussing this on J2ski.com in the hope that someone would join in with our discussion.

Thanks for telling us that this lift is the only one that Tenna has, no wonder I couldn't find Tenna listed under ski resorts!

I have had some problems with understanding google's translation, but I have managed to pick up a few things. Such as, I think the total cost of the new solar drag lift is 1,250,000 Swiss Francs which the currency converter I was using said was equal to £748,000. So the new lift is very expensive, and it seems Tenna is still looking for new sponsors to pay for part of it. There are, apparently 85 sections of solar wing, and 255 individual modules.

Sunways, the manufacturer of the photovoltaic system says that each module is 1.66 square metres and weighs 24 Kg and has an output of 240 Wp (Wp seems to stand for peak number of Watts).

I think the figure of 90,000 kWh for the solar system must be the energy produced during a whole year, and 22,000 kWh must be how much energy the lift uses when it's running. So, if the lift is running for 8 hours per day for 5 months that means it requires 18 kW of energy per hour to run. And if the solar panels are operating for 12 hours per day for 365 days per year then they must be producing an average of 20 kW of energy per hour. Which means that the solar cells are only operating at 30% of their maximum efficiency (since each panel is supposed to be 240 Wp and there are 255 of them).

I couldn't get the English version to load, so I still don't know how long the lift is.

Ally

This is an interesting piece of engineering. To understand it, look at Swingbeeps http://www.bmf-ag.ch/media/SolarWings.pdf
Scroll to page 13. The Rh pic shows the support cable and the tracking cable, ie, a motor pulls at one end, and the panels change angle, in a single plane. At 100% sunnyness, the output is 200 Kw for a 1Kw motor power. When it is snowing, I suspect that the motor pulls the tracking cable such that the panels are lying in a vertical plane.
By using cable supports, the cost of individual foundations are avoided

Dave Mac wrote:This is an interesting piece of engineering. To understand it, look at Swingbeeps http://www.bmf-ag.ch/media/SolarWings.pdf
Scroll to page 13. The Rh pic shows the support cable and the tracking cable, ie, a motor pulls at one end, and the panels change angle, in a single plane. At 100% sunnyness, the output is 200 Kw for a 1Kw motor power. When it is snowing, I suspect that the motor pulls the tracking cable such that the panels are lying in a vertical plane.
By using cable supports, the cost of individual foundations are avoided

Dave,
I got that article to load okay this morning. I agree, the motor and mechanics that drives the tracking device is very clever, but it's not actually describing the individual system for the ski lift at Tenna - it's another one. So I still don't know how much power the Tenna one is producing or consuming.

But I did get the bit that says that by tracking the sun with two axes they get 20 - 35% more energy than by using a fixed installation. And it also says that they have sensors for time, wind, snow and irradiance and they can change the rotation angle by +/- 45 degrees. So, when it gets very snowy the solar wings can move to stop the snow sitting on top of them.

I hope SwingBeep gets back to us with some more information on this. I'd like to know how much money they will get for their 'green' electricity in Tenna, and how it works out financially. If there is a big subsidy for this sort of electricity we may see more solar powered lifts around.

Ally

Maybe we'll be able to fly to the ski resorts one day using solar power :D

http://www.yourrenewablenews.com/news_item.php?newsID=48581

I have been following this topic with interest.

Would a diesel powered motor not be cheaper and more efficient? :?: