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 4 days 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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[–] sunnie@slrpnk.net 2 points 21 hours ago

I don't know. It's alarming how many people don't even have a rudimentary understanding of basic scientific principles. We were taught the laws of thermodynamics in elementary school here in the states in the early '90s for me.

The biggest lesson from thermodynamics is that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. We may only be taking a minuscule fraction of the wind energy, but taken to an extreme there are bound to be some bad effects. In between those extremes, there are likely less predictable effects like disruption to local wind patterns.

I doubt we’re anywhere near that and there’s probably little chance of ever getting close to that without huge jet stream harvesting generators or turbines covering most of the land, but we can’t pretend that the energy is free and completely without side-effects.