Toll road system powered by solar panels and system supplied by Eltek

On a sunny day in September, a team from Eltek went to Sjusjøen to check out Finter's automatic toll road system, powered by solar panels and a system supplied by Eltek. Andreas, Per Arne, and Erling wanted to review the system in operation in case adjustments to the solar panels’ positioning had to be made.

Sjusjøen, a three-hour drive from Drammen, is a popular ski area in Norway with about 5,000 cabins. The roads in the area are owned privately by the landowners, and road maintenance is financed by toll collection. 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. So far, the toll collection has been based on trust that the users would find the time and money to pay for each passage. Now, payment and passage is automatic. The Finter automatic solution includes two cameras that records the car’s registration numbers, which again is linked to the cars’ billing address, This makes life more convenient for road users and income more predictable for the land owners.

Because there is no access to grid power, the booms are operated by solar panels and Flatpack2 48/3200 HE Solar rectifiers, Rectiverter 48V, Flatpack2 DC/DC 18-75V 24/1350 inverters with twelve 180Ah gel batteries – all supplied by Eltek.

According to Finter, privately owned roads see an increase in tolls of 50 - 100 % with the introduction of a toll road system with automatic invoicing.