this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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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 (www.ecoportal.net)
submitted 1 day ago by UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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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[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] TheStaffmaster@lemmy.world 0 points 13 hours ago

Right, and we'll never walk on the moon, either. Got it.