15 MW Alpine Solar Power Plant Live In Austria

• Wien Energie has commissioned a 15 MW alpine solar power plant in Austria's Styria  
• Located 1,200 meters above sea level, it is connected to the company's existing wind power plant  
• The solar PV project site in Weiz district is also being used for sheep grazing  

Austrian energy supplier Wien Energie GmbH has commissioned what it calls the company's steepest solar PV project, a 15 MW facility in the alpine region of Austria's Styria. The project is now linked to the 21 wind turbines that Wien grid connected previously along the Steinriegel mountain, making it a hybrid power plant. 

Constructed by Strabag, the solar power project is located in the Municipality of Ratten in Weiz district, at an altitude of 1,200 meters above sea level. This hybrid project can help the municipality save up to 57,000 tons of carbon emissions annually.  

The power plant is equipped with 26,433 solar modules. It can generate electricity equivalent to providing around 5,000 Styrian households with clean energy. The site is also being used as grazing land for sheep that work as natural lawnmowers, thus replacing mechanical green cutting, it explains.  

Wien is expanding its solar PV footprint in Styria under its plans to invest around €130 million between 2020 and 2030 on this technology.  

Styria's State Councillor for the Environment, Climate Protection, Regional Development, Energy and Spatial Planning, Ursula Lackner said Styria will continue to promote renewables to meet its goal of independent energy supply for the locals.   

"With the Photovoltaics program, we have identified 778 hectares of PV priority areas with supra-local spatial planning, and since 2022 a further 407 hectares have been dedicated to PV area at the local level," shared Lackner. "The success of the efforts is measurable: Never before has so much renewable energy been generated in our country, and we are currently even exceeding the target path we have set ourselves."