Swiss Ski Resort To Be Fully Solar Powered

A Swiss ski area is going to install a solar power plant that will generate enough energy for the entire ski resort.

The 10 MW solar plant to be built above Disentis ski area will cover 80,000 m2 and generate 10 MW of power. Known as The Ovra Solara Magriel project it is being developed by Swiss energy company Axis.

The utilisation of the existing infrastructure, such as the power grid, simplifies the construction of the solar plant. The ground-mounted plant will have an installed capacity of ten megawatts and produce 17 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually, which corresponds to the consumption of 4,000 Swiss households.

The “Ovra Solara Magriel” project is part of the solar offensive that the company launched last fall. “I am very pleased that we can already announce two projects in the Canton of Grisons. We are rigorously pursuing our solar offensive and ensuring more winter power in Switzerland,” says Axpo CEO Christoph Brand.

Construction is scheduled to start in the spring of 2024. The first section will be commissioned in the fall of 2025 and full commissioning is planned for the fall of 2026. The alpine solar plant will generate valuable winter power during the cold months of the year.

The Swiss Parliament made an emergency federal act (a.k.a. Solarexpress), last autumn 2022 as energy prices rose rapidly, to lay the foundations for the rapid development of ground-mounted solar plants for high winter production in the country. The law will only remain in force until the end of 2025.