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.
Well that’s a stupid assumption. what other kind of electronic works better when it’s super hot??
Damn, two stupid ideas from the Swiss. At least the fabled “someone” put those solar panels up there. 🙄
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.
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Baseline power has become an outdated concern thanks to renewables.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.
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.
You should buy a home next to a nuclear power plant.
oh yeah all that water vapor is real scary 😱
I think that the Chernobyl disaster made much more psychological damages than real ones, in the long term.
It was very useful to Big Oil.