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.
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.
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.
To be honest, historically and depending on the installation solar power is more useful in the summer or warmer months and dams are less useful because you’re hoping the reservoir fills up and provides power all winter. The reverse is true in the winter we’re damn sure produce more reliable energy but solar power is slightly less available
So to me this sounds like a fairly elegant solution where the dam will now produce large amounts of power throughout the spring and summer months as well as the fall and winter months allowing for more water to be saved up for the winter and more power generation. I’m sure the solar also helps augment the winter as well
I’m not sure if anyone said this already and the comments but this should be a great idea for the Hoover dam and or whatever the damn’s name is over by Lake Powell. There are almost dead pool at this point.
Maintenance access looks like a pain in the ass, and I would wonder about possible issues with snow/ice buildup and load limits, but otherw8se this is a nice use of the space.
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.
Concrete has a lot of thermal mass. I could believe that it stays warm enough that ice can’t stay on the surface, especially with a reservoir of non-frozen water behind it.
The steel brackets and aluminum panel frames will get a lot colder, especially with wind blowing around them. Basically the same principle as a bridge forming ice before the road on either side of it.
Had a friend who did maintenance work on cell phone towers. Where some people see danger, others see a fat paycheck.
That paycheck eats into power costs, though.
How many kwh/year does one paycheck cover?
I dunno! Its a good question, I have no idea how much they’d actually ice up.
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.
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.
You’ll never believe who!!
Dams hate this one weird trick!
Oh, the power company owning the dam.
…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. 🙄
Solar is much cheaper than nuclear in the long run, you dumbass
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.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.
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.
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.
You should buy a home next to a nuclear power plant.
Hello Petzl! Would have been pretty cool to work on that solar project.
Splendid! It solves the issue with south-facing panels overheating.
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?
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.
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.
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…
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
In the United States, this is called treason because it makes Donald Trump PP in his pants
This thread is now about 'Murica
Murica thinks everything is 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
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.
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.
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.
invent your own Internet
Seriously, please. The one we have now sucks.
Everyone’s a critic
I promise you don’t just sound like one.
Lies!
Donald’s adult diapers stop his PP from reaching his pants.
Facts!! 🙌
Those are the lies
Only a little bit of poop*, once in a while… okay! 😤😡
Just during press briefings. “Everyone out!”
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.
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
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.
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.
yeah i mean even after it’s built up it will slide off in sheets when there is enough sun.
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.
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.
It doesn’t really answer your question, but this article calls the Muttsee the highest reservoir in Europe, at least that’s something.
