Switzerland bolted 5,000 solar panels onto a dam wall 8,000 feet up in the freezing Alps. The plant now makes three times more winter power than any farm down in the valleys

But goats be pissed.

I’ll be Dam, that’s clever

Only a little bit of poop*, once in a while... okay! 😤😡

This thread is now about 'Murica

Lies!

Donald's adult diapers stop his PP from reaching his pants.

"We went to bed one night, and when we woke the next morning, they were there! Someone must have bolted them on."

You'll never believe who!!

Alright yeah okay, it was me

Good shout.

Here is an older article on the start of construction from a publicly funded news organization:

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/sci-tech/switzerland-builds-biggest-alpine-solar-plant/46883572

Here is the article from when it was done (September 2022!), but this one isn't available in English I'm afraid:

https://www.swissinfo.ch/ger/groesste-alpine-solaranlage-der-schweiz-hat-volle-leistung-erreicht/47868356

As a primary source, here's the project page of one of the involved companies:

https://www.axpo.com/ch/en/energy/generation-and-distribution/solar-power/alpinsolar.html

Edit: Corrected the first link. Had too many tabs open and posted this one by accident: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/archive-alpine-environment/construction-starts-on-first-large-scale-solar-park-in-swiss-alps/87531886

It's pretty rare to find a river that runs north, though.

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.

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.

You should buy a home next to a nuclear power plant.

Solar is much cheaper than nuclear in the long run, you dumbass

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".

usually snow slides off solar panels fairly easily since they are smooth, tilted, and absorb heat.

Maybe search for highest-altitude reservoirs instead of dams?

I would imagine that you could set up some sort of insulated battery and/or capacitor setup that could be used to melt off any accumulated snow and ice once a storm passes with some heating elements embedded in the photovoltaics. Though, that probably introduces the issue of falling frozen debris striking panels lower down on the dam. Nonetheless, given the efficiency gains, it’s probably a problem worth solving - especially since this Swiss proof-of-concept seems to be working out so well.

It doesn't really answer your question, but this article calls the Muttsee the highest reservoir in Europe, at least that's something.

https://www.waterpowermagazine.com/news/muttsee-dam-solar-plant-to-provide-balancing-energy-for-swissgrid/

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.

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.

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

Putting solar panels in a valley in Switzerland is... a graphic demonstration of tunnel vision.

There was a lot of news about the Muttsee Dam solar project a few years ago, so it's a real thing and a good thing. But it's hardly current news. It's been operational since 2022.

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

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.

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.

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

this comment should be at the top. My dumbass didn't realize this was an AI image

I encoded the actual images down in another comment

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

- Upton Sinclair

- Michael Scott

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.

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.

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).

if you look at the picture in the article, you can see they’re not angled up very far. They’re actually almost vertical.

Apparently bifacial panels are a thing, TIL!

Angled upwards, but not so much that reflected light from below can't hit the panels

Not just on the dam itself, but across the lake to reduce evaporation - like they've been doing extensively in Australia.

The Trump dam?

A Dyson swarm is already being built. Every solar powered satellite is part of it.

flipping through the SpaceX IPO

Sooner, if you give Mecha Hitler another trillion dollars

Had a friend who did maintenance work on cell phone towers. Where some people see danger, others see a fat paycheck.

Maybe they have to clear it off the dam anyway, so the cost is sort of amortized?

And/or maybe the steep angle helps?

I mention it because that concrete looks clear of ice/snow to me.

Got news about snow and ice in Switzerland: it happens in the valleys during winter just as heavy as it ever does at the higher elevations.

For the same cooling reason some places have been covering irrigation canals with solar panels. The water cools down the panels and it reduces water loss through evaporation.

If you're referring to convection, probably not. Convective motion of air is so slight that even the tiniest breeze would do more to cool the panels. I'm not sure there's any outdoor location in the entire world with stagnant enough air that it would matter. It's better to just angle them to catch the most sunlight.

A large group of solar panels is often called a solar farm. Similarly, groups of wind turbines are often called wind farms.

I don’t know what they are in comparison size wise but I feel like solar farm is pretty standard terminology but the mixed use threw me a bit at first also.

The solar plant makes more power than any farm in the valley.

You'll want to read the article. Solar farms in the valley have to deal with fog during the winter months, which drastically reduces the energy they produce.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/farm#%3A%7E%3Atext=7%2Ctanks

Absolutely! They have spillways for this scenario. Practical Engineering on YouTube has a few videos on spillways and a spillway failure.

Dams normaly have a specificly designed spillway as it could otherwise be VERY dangerus (the water removeing dirt at its base , possably leading to dam failure)

I doubt the solar panels were put on it tho

If water is just overflowing it entirely like a glass of water then shits so fucked that the solar panels just dont matter

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)

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.

south facing: google maps

Solar modules are often cooler than their surroundings when they're operating, since they transform ~25% of incoming solar energy into electricity instead of heat.

Isn't it just the same heat energy that would have been beating down on the environment otherwise (plus some sort of reduction since the panels are converting some of it to power)

Sir this is a Switzerlands.

Definitely likely. But what's the $/kwh? And is it worth the price for the added year-round contribution to the grid relative to, say, natural gas imports or coal plant construction/maintenance?

One thing they note is the difficulty of building and maintaining wind farms in the region, which I found surprising. And wind has undercut fossil fuel power for almost a decade. The appeal of solar energy is that these panels are incredibly cheap and light weight, making this kind of installation possible at all. Virtually no moving parts. Comparatively little to maintain. Modular such that if one component fails, it doesn't shut down the whole installation.

I think you might be surprised how appealing this setup is, even in remote locations.

As someone who maintains solar installations... this looks like a goddamn nightmare to maintain. Trying to hunt down an arc fault or a loose mc4 connector on this would be impossible.

this kind: https://www.cscs.ch/computers/alps

Poor Swiss and their pride of shitty power plants, not realizing that a water dam is the opposite of ecological power production.