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.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    3·
    3 hours ago

    I’m 100% sure the dam wall is not North-facing.

    Mind you, this a great idea for a Dam facing the right way (ideally South).

    • jivandabeast@lemmy.browntown.devEnglish
      6·
      3 hours ago

      I mean even if it’s not south facing, im sure some production is still better than no production (to a certain point, obv there needs to be some multiple of ROI to make sense)

    • mystik@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      3 hours ago

      The article is written in a very terse style, but it does mention the dam happens to be (a) south facing, and (b) above the fog line, so it can produce in the winter when fog covers the lowlands. It also mentions that there is a bit of an albedo affect – the snow reflects some of the sun back up to the panels.