The power of sunshine
At Sjusjøen in Norway, a popular all-year recreation and holiday area for thousands of people, the sun, Eltek and our customer Finter have joined forces and set up solar-driven automatic toll-road collection stations.
Sjusjøen, a two and a half hour drive from Oslo, is a popular destination for holidays and weekend visits. There are about 3,000 cabins in the area. A network of roads that are owned and maintained privately by local landowners, crisscross the area.
The users of the roads pay for road maintenance and snow clearing through toll payment. So far, toll collection has relied on road users finding the time and money to pay for each passage, in the past by putting cash into and envelope and the envelope into a letter box, and more recently by payments kiosks with physical barriers. Now, however, both passage and payment are completely automatic.
Two cameras record each car’s registration number, which again is linked to the owner’s billing details, and withdraws the correct amount, by subscription or generates an electronic invoice, depending on the user’s setup with the bank. This makes life more convenient for road users and income more predictable for the road owners.
Eltek team on location
While some of the area has been fairly recently developed and is grid-connected, some is also off-grid. In general, one cannot rely on grid power for the operation of automatic toll stations. But power of the sun never fails. One of the five toll stations is powered by an Eltek renewable energy solution consisting of solar panels on stands, a Type 3 outdoor cabinet housing a Flatpack2 48/3200 HE Solar inverter, a Rectiverter 48V, and a FLATPACK2 DC/DC 18-75V 24/1350 converter and 12pcs 180Ah Gel batteries.
According to Finter AS, the operating company for NorgesBom, and Eltek’s customer, privately owned roads see an increase in toll income of 30 - 100 % with the introduction of a toll road system with their Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology.
