Deep in the narrow Vestfjord valley in Norway's Telemark, surrounded by steep slopes at the foot of the Gaustatoppen Mountain lies the little industrial town of Rjuken.Because of its aspect, the town gets no sun for around six months of the year.
Back in 1913, Rjuken's lateral thinker and imaginative founder Sam Eyde came up with the idea of using mirrors to direct the sun into the town and now, a hundred years later, that dream is about to become a reality and letting the sunshine in is all to be done with mirrors.
A computer driven heliostat placed at the top of a steep mountain wall four hundred metres above the town will capture the sun's rays and direct them into Rjuken's town centre illuminating a two hundred square foot area.
Power to the people.
If you can dream it you can do it...
What? All that effort wasted on concrete when it could be growing vegetables? Maybe they can meet at the town square and work on their suntans!
ReplyDeleteMy grandparents lived along a river with step mountain like hills on bother sides of the river. The sun came up real late and set real early. Only had a few hours of sun in the middle of the day. They didn't have any big mirrors. . .
ReplyDeleteI'd be sitting in that patch of sunshine if I lived there. I can imagine festivals and all sorts of other benefits for Rjuken.
ReplyDeletelooks like the location of the movie "the Heroes of Telemark", with Richard Harris and Kirk Douglass - that place was clearly only built to house the workers at the factory
ReplyDelete