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

Swis showing off their awsomeness again

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

This thread is now about 'Murica

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.

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 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. 🙄

yeah i mean even after it's built up it will slide off in sheets when there is enough sun.

"We went to bed one night, and when we woke the next morning, they were there! Someone must have bolted them on."

invent your own Internet

Seriously, please. The one we have now sucks.

That's cool and all but when are we getting a dyson sphere?

Good point, great comparison.

flipping through the SpaceX IPO

Sooner, if you give Mecha Hitler another trillion dollars

You'll never believe who!!

A Dyson swarm is already being built. Every solar powered satellite is part of it.

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.