Switzerland bolted 5,000 solar panels onto a dam wall 8,000 feet up in the freezing Alps where everyone said solar made no sense, and the plant now makes three times more winter power than any farm down in the valleys
www.ecoportal.net
High in the Swiss Alps, on a concrete dam wall more than 8,000 feet above the sea, someone bolted thousands of solar panels to a place almost no one thought

Up on the dam, almost everything that looks like a problem becomes an advantage.

The plant sits above the fog line, in thin, clear air that lets far more sunlight through.

The higher you go, the stronger and cleaner the sunlight becomes.

Cold actually helps, because solar panels work more efficiently when they are not baking in heat.

And then there is the snow, which acts like a giant mirror, bouncing extra light up onto the panels from below.

Scientists call it the albedo effect, and it can lift a mountain plant’s output well beyond anything possible in the valley.

A test site at a similar height recorded yearly output far above a typical Swiss plant.

    • Tire@lemmy.mlEnglish
      8·
      1 month ago

      Yeah people and the media have this weird fascination with putting solar panels in new places. I don’t think finding locations to add them is as big of an issue for how much people seem to care and want to “solve” it.

      • BeMoreCareful@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        1 month ago

        In a lot of way, the electric grid binds us all together because we have to maintain and improve on the other side of that, it’s a powerful way to motivate folks(rimshot). A lot of countries have had issues with this over the years.

        Trying to put solar back in that “box” is not a good use of our time.

        It’s not cold fusion, but it just may be close enough.

        • Kvoth@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 month ago

          Could fusion is and always was completely nonsense, it was a design flaw of a measurement instrument that made people think it worked, even though everyone who worked in nuclear fusion immediately dismissed as impossible. There’s a great book that covers the subject called atomic adventures, written by one of the guys very involved in disproving the idea

    • cecinestpasunecommunication@lemmy.dbzer0.comBannedEnglish
      7·
      1 month ago

      And? Its new information for future construction, highlights the importance of doing this along with any repairs or new builds where you’re doing some of that work anyway.

      Confirms the energy is there.

      And its literally on a damn, so storing excess with pumped hydro is can be done with like 0 transmission inefficiency.

    • VAK@lemmy.worldEnglish
      61·
      1 month ago

      You’re very wrong about Switzerland. About 45% of their energy use is from oil and gas.