Lago di Poschiavo is a natural

lake A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from ...

in the Val di Poschiavo in the Swiss canton of the

Grisons The Grisons (; ) or Graubünden (),Names include: * ; *Romansh language, Romansh: ** ** ** ** ** **; * ; * ; * . See also list of European regions with alternative names#G, other names. more formally the Canton of the Grisons or the Canton ...

Geography

It lies at an elevation of , a length of , a surface area of and a maximum depth of . The lake is both fed and drained by the Poschiavino river and drains to the south, with its water eventually reaching the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...

via the rivers Adda and Po. The lake lies within the municipality of Poschiavo, and the villages of Le Prese and Miralago lie at its northern and southern ends respectively. The Bernina railway line runs alongside the western side of the lake, with stations at Le Prese and Miralago. The main valley road ( Hauptstrasse 29) follows a higher route on the same side of the lake. A level hiking trail circumnavigates the lake, with some sections on the more precipitous eastern side in tunnel. The lake was first referred to in 1010, when the newly founded monastery of San Abbondio in

Como Como (, ; , or ; ) is a city and (municipality) in Lombardy, Italy. It is the administrative capital of the Province of Como. Nestled at the southwestern branch of the picturesque Lake Como, the city is a renowned tourist destination, ce ...

was granted fishing rights on the lake. By 1239 the fishing rights belonged to the . Between 1904 and 1907 the lake was converted into a reservoir as part of a series of hydro-electric power plants in the Val di Poschiavo that are fed from the Lago Bianco. Water arriving at the lake in the Poschiavino river has already passed through several plants, and water leaving the lake passes along a tunnel high along the western side of the valley and then down a pipeline to feed the at Campocologno. The conversion to a reservoir involved constructing a dam at the lake's outfall at Miralago that raised the maximum level of the lake by . In operation the level of water can vary by up to , giving a usable storage capacity of . The total capacity of the lake when full is . There are current proposals to construct a pumped storage scheme based on Lago di Poschiavo and Lago Bianco, which is some higher. This would involve creating a long tunnel high along the western side of the Val di Poschiavo from Lago Bianco, followed by long shaft to an underground power plant on the banks of the Lago di Poschiavo. This would have a total installed capacity of 1000 MW and would consume electricity to pump water to the higher level at times of low demand and release water to generate electricity in times of high demand. The proposals have received formal consent from the cantonal authorities, but are not believed to be financially viable.

References

External links

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Poschiavo Poschiavo (, , , ) is a municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in the Bernina Region in the Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Grisons in Switzerland. History Poschiavo is first mentioned in 824 as ''in Postclave'' though this comes from a l ...

Val Poschiavo Poschiavo {{graubünden-lake-stub