Mountain railways rely on self-production of electricity
Business
In Kaprun (Pinzgau), the mountain railways are now putting a third turbine into operation at their own power plant. As a result, one third of the electricity employed will be self-produced. Many local cable car companies have been relying on the production of energy for years.
The water from the various springs is collected in a reservoir on the mountain and then channeled 400 meters down. The water is finally converted into electricity in the company’s own power plant. The turbines have been running since 2012, and today 700,000 euros have been invested in a third turbine. “The investment pays off after a long search. With our small hydroelectric power station we have a double benefit – the system was originally only intended for snowmaking and from this system we were able to build a small hydroelectric power station that also generates electricity,” says Norbert Karlsböck, CEO of Kapruner Bergbahnen.
Cable cars want to increase energy efficiency
In recent years, many mountain railways have jumped on the sustainability bandwagon and are trying to be as economical as possible in their business area – in the current situation, energy efficiency is also to be increased. In Kaprun, for example, the water from the Bergbahnen power plant then flows on to the large power plant in Kaprun.
Save and generate energy with technical innovations
Technical innovations help the mountain railways to save and generate energy: “The efficiency of a snowmaking system has improved enormously over the past 20 years. A snow cannon of the latest generation is a quarter more efficient and with the modern cable cars you can also feed braking energy back into the network,” says Günther Brennsteiner, technical director of Bergbahnen Kaprun.
Also Rauris mountain railways with their own power station
In Rauris (Pinzgau), too, the mountain railways have been operating their own power plant since 1996. So far, the electricity has been fed into the grid – that could change for the first time this winter: “We are now in a price range where you can think about whether we can feed our electric charging stations directly with our own electricity and bring the electricity into our systems . Then we would only feed the rest of the electricity into the general network,” says the managing director of the Rauriser Hochalmbahnen, Siegfried Rasser.
Increase energy efficiency with a research project
A separate research project by Salzburg’s mountain railways and energy companies is now intended to show further possibilities for increasing energy efficiency in the area of mountain railways.