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.

  • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    1021·
    vor 27 Tagen

    Content farm “articles” are difficult to distinguish from AI.

    It’s a good idea, if the dam faces a good direction (North probably isn’t worth it) even without the additional benefits of altitude.

  • jpreston2005@lemmy.worldEnglish
    637·
    vor 27 Tagen

    …the assumption was simple, that solar belongs low and warm, on sunny roofs and flat fields, not up in the freezing thin air of the mountains.

    Well that’s a stupid assumption. what other kind of electronic works better when it’s super hot??

    The country makes plenty of power in summer, but runs short in winter, when demand climbs and it has to import electricity.

    That gap is set to grow as the nation closes its nuclear plants.

    Damn, two stupid ideas from the Swiss. At least the fabled “someone” put those solar panels up there. 🙄

    • Randelung@lemmy.worldEnglish
      171·
      vor 27 Tagen

      Yeah, the fears about nucular are global I’m afraid. The Swiss decided 40 years ago that they would no longer invest in nuclear energy and massively reduce upkeep on the existing reactors, thereby making issues a self fulfilling prophecy. Most of the reactors have now reached their end of life, if not ten years ago. So turning them off is really a necessity, but building new ones now would be stupid.

    • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
      151·
      vor 27 Tagen

      Nuclear plants have a limited life time. You have to replace what ages out, and they haven’t been. Probably because they decided that the cost didn’t make sense anymore in the face of renewables.

      • MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish
        61·
        vor 26 Tagen

        Probably because they decided that the cost didn’t make sense anymore in the face of renewables.

        The political costs of nuclear power are astronomical. Safety regulation is A) a very good idea, but B) grossly overblown and C) outrageously costly to implement to the levels NIMBYs demand. Satisfying them that a windmill isn’t going to fall over and kill them is a lot easier.

      • luciferofastora@feddit.orgEnglish
        7·
        vor 26 Tagen

        I agree with you, content-wise, but there’s no need to insult people. It provokes emotions that add nothing reasonable and productive.

        Let’s work together on a better, kinder world <3

        • vandsjov@feddit.dkEnglish
          2·
          vor 26 Tagen

          Try slapping a nuclear plant on the side of a dam :) Solar can be installed so many places but of cause, needs help (like batteries, wind turbines, other power generation) to deliver power when the sun is not around.

      • oce 🐆@jlai.luEnglish
        2·
        vor 26 Tagen

        What’s your source? Solar panels certainly are much easier and cheaper to setup, but what about over 40 years (average age of reacrors in France)?

      • Ninjasftw@lemmy.worldEnglish
        44·
        vor 27 Tagen

        So you’re happy to go without power after sunset then?
        Until we have more storage options or diversified sources then that’s what you get. Or do you think it will all happen by magic?
        Maybe try being less rude unless you have a solution that doesn’t just involve wishful thinking.

          • Ninjasftw@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            vor 26 Tagen

            Ffs this is exactly what I mean… To power Switzerland for only 6 hours (38GWh), you would need approximately 30,000 to 35,000 utility-scale batteries. Where and how exactly are you building them?

            • Ghoelian@piefed.socialEnglish
              2·
              vor 26 Tagen

              Not a problem if you have your own panels and your own battery.

              I’m not a city planner so i dont know where they’d go if you want to support the whole country, maybe ask one of them?

              Also, you don’t need to immediately take over the electricity of the whole damn country. Just start with one battery park somewhere, that already helps somewhat, and build out from there.

              • Ninjasftw@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                vor 25 Tagen

                Who is paying for it? I have solar and battery at home. It cost me an amount that a lot of people can’t afford and its rare that I don’t have to pull from the grid every day while at other times the power company is paying me to take energy from the grid because there is too much renewable energy being produced.
                My country is building out battery parks as much as its able to. Every site seems to get bogged down with nimby protesters who all seems to want renewable energy but not near them. I am all for renewable energy, I just think a lot of people don’t understand the scale of whats required to replace a single nuclear power plant.

                • Ghoelian@piefed.socialEnglish
                  1·
                  vor 24 Tagen

                  Well in the case of the Netherlands, solar panels used to be subsidised by the government (I think that program ended last year or something), and currently, you can get subsidies for home batteries. The government does also want to fix the grif after all.

                  There’s actually quite a lot of people here that have solar panels and a home battery here, enough to make a measurable difference when imbalance ia high.

            • karlhungus@lemmy.caEnglish
              1·
              vor 25 Tagen

              Must solve all problems at the same time for entire country, can’t possibly wind things down while building up alternatives. Only good solution is nuclear, ignore all previous nuclear issues, they were one offs that only happened because people were stupid. We now smart humans will never have stupid or corrupt people.

              Really I don’t even dislike nuclear, some people treat it as the only option when there are clearly alternatives, and solar and batteries appears to be one.

              • Ninjasftw@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                vor 25 Tagen

                That’s what is happening but it not happening fast enough. Batteries are great but unless you build out a LOT of them and combine with intelligent grids and power consumption you aren’t covering the output of a nuclear power plant. If you are decommissioning a nuclear plant then you had better have alternative power available otherwise you end up like Germany who did that and then had pull a lot of power from Frances nuclear excess as well as burning extra gas for power. I like renewables, I have solar + battery at home, I’ve built flow battery models and fuel cells to experiment with. I’ve written software to turn my house (and hopefully include my neighbours soon) into a virtual power plant based on my houses output as well as the wholesale market price. It’s difficult to manage when people expect a light to turn on at any time they want. I just get tired of people saying renewables are the only option and when it inevitably isn’t just yet having to burn more fossil fuels when the existing nuclear plant can continue

                • karlhungus@lemmy.caEnglish
                  1·
                  vor 24 Tagen

                  That is rad. My father started with solar domestic hot water heating, then got some PV solar, never bothered with batteries (it was at a time when batteries kind of sucked). Did ok for our northern latitudes. Power company didn’t encourage it though which makes it feel like a bit of an uphill battle. I’m thinking of doing my own house but again, it seems like you’ve got to be the expert if you want to make it work, and power companies aren’t happy to have your contributions.

                  I guess I just get a bit - understanding when people say they are scared of nuclear. I do realize that in aggregate fossile has been way worse than nuclear.

        • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          3·
          vor 27 Tagen

          Supply controlled energy grid.

          Money is extremely good at influencing energy demand. If your power bill increases tenfold per kwh at night then you will do your laundry during the day when it’s cheap. It only requires smart electric meters which are starting to be the norm.

          Electric cars can further function as home batteries if they support bidirectional charging.

          • Commuting4375@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            vor 26 Tagen

            Ah yes, the abstinence technique. Brilliant.

            I for one like the ability to heat my home at night in the winter, not have it be >30°C inside in the summer (system has to catch up at night), keep my living space at a reasonable humidity, cook food, and use modern amenities without incurring a ridiculous cost.

            There’s no other way to cut it. We will need more electrical capacity than today, not less.

            • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
              1·
              vor 26 Tagen

              Why would you be heating at night?

              Like seriously, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t turn their heating significantly down before going to bed. You only need to heat the bedrooms which are also generally colder.

              Same with air conditioning. It’s primarily needed when it’s actually hot, which - as it turns out - is when the sun is shining and energy prices are low.

              Besides: It completely ignores decentralized energy storage. Households with batteries can just let them charge when energy prices are low and discharge when prices are high.

              There’s a reason smart meters are starting to be mandated. People will need to adjust their habits slightly¹ but that’s just the price to pay for sustainable energy.

              ¹Like very slightly. As in checking the energy price forecast before doing laundry.

              Edit: A couple basic introductions to the topic to read up on if you’re interested:

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_meter (also read up on AMI)

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid

  • mechoman444@lemmy.worldEnglish
    381·
    vor 26 Tagen

    I have a very serious issue with this!

    What about the profits for coal companies! How are they supposed to make money! What if they go out of business!

    WON’T SOMEBODY THINK ABOUT COAL INDUSTRY PROFITS!

    • normalentrance@lemmy.zipEnglish
      13·
      vor 26 Tagen

      They’re going to cool off the sun if they aren’t careful. /s

      I seriously used to work with a guy who thought wind turbines might have negative impact on the environment because it was “taking the wind”.

          • mechoman444@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            vor 25 Tagen

            As far as I can tell from what I’ve been able to look up, that’s not quite how it works. The wind itself isn’t converted into electricity. The turbine extracts kinetic energy from the moving air and converts a portion of that energy into electrical energy. As a result, the air leaving the turbine is moving more slowly than the air entering it.

            That reduction in wind speed is real, but it’s localized. Atmospheric mixing continually replenishes the slower-moving air with faster-moving air from above and the surrounding area, so the effect largely dissipates as you move away from the wind farm. The amount of energy extracted is so small that it doesn’t have any meaningful effect beyond the immediate vicinity of the wind farm.

            🤷

            I don’t know. It’s alarming how many people don’t even have a rudimentary understanding of basic scientific principles. We were taught the laws of thermodynamics in elementary school here in the states in the early '90s for me.

            • vandsjov@feddit.dkEnglish
              4·
              vor 25 Tagen

              The wind itself isn’t converted into electricity. The turbine extracts kinetic energy from the moving air and converts a portion of that energy into electrical energy. As a result, the air leaving the turbine is moving more slowly than the air entering it.

              That’s what I said, just without mentioning all the stuff in between - I’m sure that there’s cables and other boring details involved as well ;-)

            • sunnie@slrpnk.netEnglish
              2·
              vor 23 Tagen

              I don’t know. It’s alarming how many people don’t even have a rudimentary understanding of basic scientific principles. We were taught the laws of thermodynamics in elementary school here in the states in the early '90s for me.

              The biggest lesson from thermodynamics is that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. We may only be taking a minuscule fraction of the wind energy, but taken to an extreme there are bound to be some bad effects. In between those extremes, there are likely less predictable effects like disruption to local wind patterns.

              I doubt we’re anywhere near that and there’s probably little chance of ever getting close to that without huge jet stream harvesting generators or turbines covering most of the land, but we can’t pretend that the energy is free and completely without side-effects.

  • ceenote@lemmy.worldEnglish
    34·
    vor 27 Tagen

    I tried (but not very hard) to check what the highest altitude dam in the world is, but searches kept giving me the tallest dams instead. But, for anyone who’s wondering, I also looked up what the highest altitude solar farm in the world is, and it turns out it’s the Huadian Tibet Caipeng project, at 5,228 meters (17,152 feet) above sea level on the highest plateau in the world. I have to wonder if snow accumulation outweighs the benefits of the lower temperatures and thinner atmosphere.

  • TheStaffmaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
    332·
    vor 27 Tagen

    I’ve thought for YEARS that we should to the same thing with the Hoover Dam. Should also mount wind turbines on the face of it to catch the updrafts out of the canyon. You all acting like green energy has to be mutually exclusive to one another. Wind turbine blades have a lot of surface area that could be covered in solar panels, which solves the issue of solar panels energy output decreasing with heat because then they’d always have built in cooling. No wind? There’s still light and some wattage is better than no wattage. Put the turbine blade head on a giant hinge and they can catch rising air from the grounds’ radiant heat at night. Free energy is everywhere if you just know where to look and how to take advantage of it.

    • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      14·
      vor 26 Tagen

      Wind turbine blades have a lot of surface area that could be covered in solar panels, which solves the issue of solar panels energy output decreasing with heat because then they’d always have built in cooling.

      That is a stupid idea. Blade weight is one of the biggest engineering issues for wind turbines.

      • TheStaffmaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        vor 26 Tagen

        if you can get a solar cell in a 6 oz calculator, I doubt highly that incorporating it into the design of the blade is going to add much more weight than the expanded aluminum and fibreglass that’s already there.

        • ammonium@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          vor 26 Tagen

          Any extra weight is too much. Plus a 6 oz calculator doesn’t usually fly at 300km/h in open weather, you will need some strong (heavy) glass or plastic too protect the panels. Much simpler too just put them on the ground next to the wind turbine.

        • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          2·
          vor 26 Tagen

          Are you listening to yourself? Because a 4 cm² solar cell fits in a 170 g calculator, that means that 200-300 m² of solar cells will be fine for the 35 ton turbine blades at around π/2/s of angular momentum with the outer radius of 100m? Those concepts are barely related.

          You have no idea if the fiber glass blades have the tensile force to spare to deal with 3 tons of extra weight from the panels alone, or what it will do to the bearings in the generator if you load them 10% or 15% more, or how much flat panels will fuck up your blade aerodynamics, or how expensive it will be to get custom curved panels to preserver the aerodynamics.

          Just hand waving everything that stands against your idea away as solvable is magical thinking, not visionary brilliance.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      131·
      vor 27 Tagen

      You all acting like green energy has to be mutually exclusive to one another.

      I certainly don’t. But I agree, there’s a lot of ideas that die on the cutting room floor because they don’t pander to a specific lobbying interest.

    • reptar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      vor 26 Tagen

      Maybe it’s no big deal, but I imagine there’s a significant complication of the blades to do that. They’re basically wings, and (again, I’d imagine) are structurally sensitive.

      Agree with your general point of mix and match and combine

      • gian @lemmy.grys.itEnglish
        3·
        vor 26 Tagen

        Maybe it’s no big deal, but I imagine there’s a significant complication of the blades to do that. They’re basically wings, and (again, I’d imagine) are structurally sensitive.

        I think a problem could be that the wind turbines are moving parts, so they somehow vibrate, and that could be a problem for the dam while panel on the other hand are basically a layer of paint.

  • fenrasulfr@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    vor 26 Tagen

    I imagine they had to do a lot of calculations in order to be sure this installation would not compromise the dam. But if this could be applied in other locations, it could be extremely benificial.

    • Chiarottide@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      vor 26 Tagen

      Honestly, I think it wouldn’t be a problem in any dam. I’m sure they made all the required studies but dams are so thick and made to withstand such great forces that a couple of solar panels bolted on would be negligible. I bet 10cm of water rise would be a way bigger load

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        vor 26 Tagen

        Especially considering anything attracted attached to the dam is going to add a vertical force that could do more to help with the lateral force from the water than it would do to bring the dam closer to collapse, though probably does closer to nothing to the overall physics of the dam.

        Edit: Fixed a word as I don’t think the existence of damphiles has any effect on the performance of dams until they start drilling/punching holes in them.

  • Reddfugee42@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    vor 26 Tagen

    Why the fuck would everyone say solar doesn’t make sense up where it’s cold and clear where anyone who knows anything about the topic knows that solar is most efficient?

    • busted_Anoose@aussie.zoneEnglish
      1·
      vor 24 Tagen

      Not only that, but it also works brilliantly on farms, giving sheep something to hide under for shade, makes their wool higher quality, and the earth underneath retains more moisture, and well as holding more dew for later in the day.

  • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    vor 27 Tagen

    I would think solar would be even more efficient high up in mountains.

    Colder temperatures mean they’d stay cooler, produce more power, and for longer… and they are higher up in the air, so amount of photons hitting the panels has to be higher than at sea level, too, further increasing power generation.

    At least thats what I’d assume, applying some common sense and a little educated guessing.

    • schnapsman@feddit.orgEnglish
      3·
      vor 26 Tagen

      I read the German source article someone else posted and you’re spot on. The thinner air is the main advantage for the reason you mentioned. But apparently snow-reflected light off the surrounding peaks is a significant factor as well. I find that interesting.

  • oce 🐆@jlai.luEnglish
    10·
    vor 27 Tagen

    I’m confused by the albedo argument. The reflected light would need to reach the solar panels, but the panels are facing up. So how could a surface of ice/snow be sufficiently facing the solar panels to reflect a significant amount of sun light towards the panels?

    Edit: nevermind, using my hands to draw imaginary angles, I’ve concluded it can work with a facing normal white slope for some sun position if the orientation is favorable.

    • Creddit@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      vor 27 Tagen

      Hold out your hand flat, palm facing straight up. Now tilt it at any angle without going perpendicular to the ground, but let’s just use 45 degrees for example.

      With your hand tilted backwards just a bit, but still facing upward overall, look across the room and you can predict where you would need to squat down to see the palm of your hand even if you were on the ground.

      This shows light can travel in a straight line from that spot on the ground to the palm of your hand even though your palm is still facing upward overall, albeit at an angle of 45 degrees (and there is a spot on the ground that works at any angle, but the spot is farther away if the hand is tilted less).