- cross-posted to:
- goodnewseveryone@piefed.social
- cross-posted to:
- goodnewseveryone@piefed.social
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.
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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.
It’s pretty rare to find a river that runs north, though.
Huh? There’s no reasons for rivers to not run north, the longest river in the world runs south to north.
I went to find stats on how common or uncommon it is for rivers to flow north or south and instead I ended up learning that the major driving factor for the placement of tbe Canadian Border is a series of watersheds which largely dictate flow direction. Image attached.
So Canadian rivers are more likely to flow north and USA rivers mostly flow south.
Good shout.
Here is an older article on the start of construction from a publicly funded news organization:
Here is the article from when it was done (September 2022!), but this one isn’t available in English I’m afraid:
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
Article reads like AI trash. Is there an actual source?
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.
In the United States, this is called treason because it makes Donald Trump PP in his pants
This thread is now about 'Murica
This is the Internet. Everything is about America. for fucks sake, we invented it.
sorry to sound like a dick, but seriously… If you don’t like that, invent your own Internet
the itnernet wasn’t created by the US. it started as ARPNET, which yes was created in the US. but the internet that we know today wasn’t created in the US, the WORLD wide web was created in Switerland in 1989 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee while working at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research). the world wide web, or the internet, uses a lot of the same protocols that ARPNET created. but ARPNET is not and was not world wide until Sir Tim used the same protocols to allow regular people to traverse ARPNET from around the world. the US built the underlying tech, but Sir Tim Berners-Lee and CERN built the internet on top.
claiming the US created the internet is false, just like saying Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. when Edison bought the patent from two Canadians named Henry Woodward (a medical student) and Mathew Evans (a hotel keeper) from Toronto Ontario, who actually invented the incandescent light bulb 5 years (1874) before edison bought the patent. Henry and Mathew only sold the canadian and US patents in 1879 to edison because they lacked the funds and could not find any investors to manufacture them. at best what edison did was improved the filament inside so they lasted longer. but buying a patent is not the same as inventing it.
just more failure of the US education system.
Troll
Whoops. That was supposed to be a report, not a comment. MB.
You are pretty much rendering yourselves extinct, so drop the air of superiority, because archeologists will be trying to decipher years from now, what fucked up deity made you commit civilizational suicide.
Piss boy tantrum reply number 187,318
Blocked.
I promise you don’t just sound like one.
invent your own Internet
Seriously, please. The one we have now sucks.
Everyone’s a critic
r/ShitAmericansSay
This has to be a bad troll comment. It’s like saying “This is pizza, you can’t talk about anything other than Italy when eating it”.
How are you this dumb?
Piss boy tantrum reply number 187,312
Blocked.
Murica thinks everything is about Murica
Only a little bit of poop*, once in a while… okay! 😤😡
Just during press briefings. “Everyone out!”
Lies!
Donald’s adult diapers stop his PP from reaching his pants.
Facts!! 🙌
Those are the lies
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?
Apparently bifacial panels are a thing, TIL!
bifacial
I should call him…
if you look at the picture in the article, you can see they’re not angled up very far. They’re actually almost vertical.
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).
Angled upwards, but not so much that reflected light from below can’t hit the panels
The high temperature efficiency drop off of solar panels is something I’ve only recently become aware of, but am glad this helps with that.
Even in hotter areas, I’ll bet a vertical / near vertical orientation would help them vent heat (if placed on dams there).
Does anyone have any specific experience with this kind of engineering to confirm/deny that would actually help?
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.
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.
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.
usually snow slides off solar panels fairly easily since they are smooth, tilted, and absorb heat.
I was more referring to snowpack - at this elevation, multiple days of snowfall accumulating several feet deep is common in some parts of the world. For reference, the tallest mountain in Colorado is 3000 feet lower. I assume it’s a pretty arid region, or they wouldn’t have built it.
It can build up overnight though, so I think the question remains valid.
yeah i mean even after it’s built up it will slide off in sheets when there is enough sun.
Smooth and tilted still applies. Also, being a mesa, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was wind as a factor. Turns out the Mars rovers Opportunity and Spirit ended up lasting longer than originally expected in part because the winds on Mars ended up cleaning the accumulated dust on the solar panels.
Good point, great comparison.
Maybe search for highest-altitude reservoirs instead of dams?
It doesn’t really answer your question, but this article calls the Muttsee the highest reservoir in Europe, at least that’s something.
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.
photovoltaic panels are just giant diodes you can run them in reverse and every panel gets that 0.6V voltage drop like any other silicon junction
apacitor 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.
My biggest concern is that I have to assume there’s a far greater initial cost for installation, in addition to higher costs for maintenance versus a more traditional farm
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.
That’s a Dam good idea
I’ll be Dam, that’s clever
But goats be pissed.
I’d imagine that goats can walk on solar panels too.
Without even damaging them…
And munch on them.
I’m sure the greatest-of-all-times will understand
Any ideas on an potential increase in ambient temperature from those dark surfaces of the panels?
Offsetting or replacing climate warming electricity generation, especially through what seems to be an increased efficiency, is great, but we’re still doing the climate warming methods.
And, not a statement of “don’t do this”, just concerned about regions of cold and frozen environments given our present course and interested in the data.
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)
What type of datacenter are “AIps”? /j
this kind: https://www.cscs.ch/computers/alps
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).
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.
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)
south facing: google maps
someone bolted thousands of solar panels to a place almost no one thought was worth it.
“Someone”
2026 journalism
“We went to bed one night, and when we woke the next morning, they were there! Someone must have bolted them on.”
Did you know? If you leave dishes in the sink, they will magically be cleaned and put away the next day! I told by partner and then stared at me dumbfounded.
Wish someone would just overnight install a vast solar array on my roof. I’d love getting money from the power company every month, instead of giving it to them.
Alright yeah okay, it was me
Must have been a hell of a day to bolt all of these!
twas indeed
You’ll never believe who!!
Oh, the power company owning the dam.
I mean, the dam is already wired into the power grid, the top of the dam gets far more hours of sun than the valleys, it’s almost as if “someone” didn’t think about things before being amazed at the outcome.
Dams hate this one weird trick!
That joke checks a lot of boxes
That’s cool and all but when are we getting a dyson sphere?
A Dyson swarm is already being built. Every solar powered satellite is part of it.
That’s more of a Kessler syndrome swarm
flipping through the SpaceX IPO
Sooner, if you give Mecha Hitler another trillion dollars
…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. 🙄
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.
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.
The grid still needs baseline power when renewables aren’t renewing.
Baseline power has become an outdated concern thanks to renewables.
Go look up baseline power, or whatever the technical term for grid stability is.
What grids value more these days is easily dispatchable power. Sources that you can turn on and off easily to respond to market conditions.
You should buy a home next to a nuclear power plant.
I think that the Chernobyl disaster made much more psychological damages than real ones, in the long term.
Solar is much cheaper than nuclear in the long run, you dumbass
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
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)?
Levelized cost of energy. It considers the full lifetime cost. And LCOE of solar is less than half that of fission.
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.Wait till they find out about batteries!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Yep, but require much more space. And it could be not available when you need it.
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.
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.
The solar plant makes more power than any farm in the valley. It’s hard for me to understand this. Farms make crops in my mind, not power. It’s just an odd comparison. Am I reading this wrong? Am I being a dumb dumb?
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.
A large group of solar panels is often called a solar farm. Similarly, groups of wind turbines are often called wind farms.
