By P Gosselin
Photovoltaic projects crumble in harsh alpine environments…Swiss solar panels on dam project fails after just 2 years.
Who cares if it works or not?
It’s often how the green racket works: Conjure up some green energy producing pie-in-the-sky project, no matter how unfeasible it may be, propose it to technically illiterate bureaucrats – who permit and fund it with little hesitation – build it, and, after realizing it won’t ever work, abandon it and let the next generation deal with the mess. In the meantime, you will have earned a tidy sum of money.
The latest likely example of such a project is “Axpo in Glarus Süd”, described at Blackout News here: “Solar panels at Muttsee dam fail after two years – solar plant not suitable for mountain use.”
The Swiss Axpo Glarus Süd solar project consisted of installing solar panels on a dam with ideal orientation.
Extremely harsh environment
It was heralded as a pioneering project and designed to last 20 years while providing green power (at least in the summertime) to nearly 3000 people. But, as Blackout News reports: “After just two years, considerable problems are already apparent. Of the 5,000 or so solar panels installed, around 270 are damaged, reports the newspaper Südostschweiz.”
A solar system in the harsh environment of the Swiss Alps? What could possibly go wrong?
Surely the builders and those approving the project had to have been familiar with extremely harsh winter conditions and massive snowfalls of the Swiss Alps, and that the system would never have a chance. Obviously no one cares much about reality anymore. The important thing, it seems, is to grab all that green cash and make a stash.
Panels damaged after just 2 years
Already, just 2 years in operation, 270 panels (5%) of the Muttsee project need to be replaced, and that at an exorbitant cost. Just check out the Axpo promotion video and take a look at the equipment needed to build the project. The helicopters, cranes, rigging and this caliber of personnel aren’t cheap.
So far I haven’t found data on the project’s return on investment time.
Another embarrassing fact: “The full extent of the damage only became clear when the snow at 2500 meters above sea level had completely melted,” reports Blackout News.
No one became aware of the damage until spring had arrived?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Panels that fail so soon are net emitters.
Funny thing, I’ve been looking at this railway system in the Swiss Alps the last couple days. This rail system was built back in 1898 and I’m quite sure the electric power for it came from coal power. I didn’t even know that they had that much electricity back then in 1898! I was in Zermatt right after I got out of the Navy in 1969 and was there for three days in december with a lot of snow around, only electric vehicles were allowed then and even now I believe …when I was there in the snow there were a lot of horse drawn sleighs going around town:
Here is their train in 1898 opening day:
https://www.gornergrat.ch/en/stories/geschichte-europes-highest-railway-at-the-time
Make the developer pay for repairs and/or eventual removal.
Eventual removal should be (have been) in the contract, since they all fail, eventually, and are especially nasty at EOL
The developer and its consultants should be charged with fraud.
No, make those who approved the concept pay.
How much diesel would that have purchased?
Hail in Kansas, snow in Switzerland. Whoda thunk.
If the cold and snow damaged the panels, how could anyone with half a brain think these toys could work, long term, at the South Pole?
Your comment leads me to ponder “And how about on the surfaces of the Moon and Mars?”
N.B. The environment of space, compared to surfaces of moons and planets, is relatively benign as regards the operational lifetimes of solar PV panels.
Do we get much snow, hail or rain on the Moon or Mars?
No
But huge daily temp swings and continuous high energy radiation exposure nevertheless create a hostile environment.
Mars can get CO2 snow and frost
But, but, but….CO2 causes runaway global WARMING!!
“Yes” to snow on Mars, depending on season and planetary latitude. In addition, there are winds and blowing dust on Mars.
The Moon has dust that is kicked up by occasional meteor impacts and hypothesized (but not proven AFAIK) venting of residual formation gases through surface fissures. Then too, the Moon has a higher flux of solar wind than does most of Earth-Moon and interplanetary space due to its gravitational “well”.
Solar would be the cheapest form of energy on the moon…until MoonOil is discovered
Wind, not so much
🤣🤣🤣 Glad I wasn’t drinking when I read this.
:…the Moon has a higher flux of solar wind than does most of Earth-Moon and interplanetary space”’
Does this mean that we can also set up super efficient windmills on the moon? I bet we could get a LOT of money to do a study from the Harris administration…
/s
I’m thinking that a solar wind powered windmill might be a little on the large size.😲
. . . but remember, lunar surface gravity is only 1/6 that at Earth’s surface so one can scale accordingly.
/sarc (or maybe not)
The 98% CO2 atmosphere of Mars is quite acidic.
The soil (think dust) is quite high in halogens:
fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine … stuff that really attacks metals.
re: “The environment of space, compared to surfaces of moons and planets, is relatively benign”
Aside from the extremes in temperature (leading to flexture of seals, joints, electrical connections, etc leading to failure) or meteorites (we have a nice atmosphere that intercepts these things) I would agree with you.
Hurricanes in Puerto Rico…
Dogs and cats living together.
“Hail in Kansas, snow in Switzerland. Whoda thunk.”
It would appear that Ma’ Gaia doesn’t want the weather to change.
“It’s often how the green racket works: Conjure up some green energy producing pie-in-the-sky project, no matter how unfeasible it may be, propose it to technically illiterate bureaucrats – who permit and fund it with little hesitation – build it, and, after realizing it won’t ever work, abandon it and let the next generation deal with the mess. In the meantime, you will have earned a tidy sum of money.” The whole scam in a nutshell.
I prefer the descriptor, “fraud”.
Being Switzerland, they will accord equal standing to all forms of electricity generation.
(Except a couple of pennies and aluminium foil poked into a lemon.
They had to draw a line somewhere . . . )
From the above article:
“Already, just 2 years in operation, 270 panels (5%) of the Muttsee project need to be replaced, and that at an exorbitant cost.”
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Gloria got sick on the transit on Monday?
Hope she had a barf-bag handy.
🙂
Perhaps . . . just perhaps . . . indicative of how much the world has “dumbed down” over the last 50 or so years. 😃
I endured 4 years of Latin as a mandatory subject at my catholic high school.
I did get the meaning of your phrase.
I curl up into the foetal position now whenever I hear –
mensa, mensae. mensam . . . 🙁
Also, I have to bite my tongue whenever I hear someone say –
“what did the Romans ever do for us?”
Amo, amas, amat,
Amamus, a pa moose and a wee baby moose.
“that at an exorbitant cost” is pure conjecture, MADE UP by Notrickszone.
“Already, just 2 years in operation, 270 panels (5%) of the Muttsee project need to be replaced, and that at an exorbitant cost. Just check out the Axpo promotion video and take a look at the equipment needed to build the project. The helicopters, cranes, rigging and this caliber of personnel aren’t cheap.”
Nobody needs to rebuild the entire thing from scratch. None of the solar panel mounts need replacing, presumably. A 400W solar panel costs £60 retail nowadays, probably £40 to the trade. It only needs ONE man to go down on a rope, undo the mounts on the ‘damaged’ solar panel, tie another rope round it, and for one other man to pull up the panel, and send a new one down on a rope. Five minutes to remove a panel and disconnect its MC4 connectors, five minutes to fit a new one. There are no “exorbitant” costs – yet you all just believed it…
Neither is the project “crumbling”. This is a ridiculous exaggeration. A few broken panels out of 5,000 is not the end of the world – and since we are never told HOW the panels became “damaged”, we have no idea what actually happened, nor whether it is likely to keep on happening.
Ummmmm . . . rebuilding the entire thing is predicated on the reasonable assumption that given 5% of all solar panels failed within two years, a linear scaling would say a total of 50% would fail within next 18 years. Moreover, the failure mode(s) might be due to an exponential variable such that, say, 75% are bound to fail within the next ten years.
Well, let’s consider some things to change that:
— winds, likely to be ever-present in the Swiss Alps, affecting both helicopter flight stability during operations and causing swinging of the solar panels on ropes
— low altitude clouds, not unheard of in the Swiss Alps during any season, delaying/preventing planned operations for multiple days during the span of solar PV panel replacements
— replacing even 270 panels at your unbelievably optimistic estimate of 10 minutes each would still amount to 45 hours of total work . . . there are no helicopters that can fly that long without refueling, so better plan on about 20 refueling trips to/from the heliport, and what is the contracted price of the helicopter for say, 90 hours total flight time? . . . I don’t know rates in Switzerland, but in the US construction-type helicopters range from $2,000 to $4,000 per hour (that implies something like 90*$3000 = $270,000 just for the helicopter and its and pilot, assuming an average price of $3,000 USD per hour of operation)
— if two workers (one in the helicopter and one suspended on rope near the panels) highly trained in the art of safely handling, removing and replacing solar PV panels were paid the reasonable estimate of $250 USD/hour . . . remember, it’s specialized work in a hazardous environment . . . then we’re looking at at least 2*90*$250 = $45,000 for just their on-the-job time . . . one would need to increase that labor cost for an additional two employees at the heliport that would be needed for loading/unloading of solar panels, and also for housing and feeding four employees (minimum) over the nine or more days (depending on weather) to complete the total replacement, based on 10 hour work days . . . so, let’s ROM total labor cost (not including helicopter pilot) at about $100,000 given estimated impact of weather on operations
— using your outrageously optimistic price of £40 ($53 USD) per replacement panel (remember, high quality PV panels that won’t fail under the hash conditions at the Muttsee dam are needed), 270*$53 = $14,300
So, based on just the above (and many other incidental costs have been left out, e.g., liability insurance, PV panel disposal, etc.), we’re looking at an estimated minimum of $384,000 USD for replacing the 270 panels. The cost of the new panels themselves (even assuming twice your estimate so as to get good quality panels) is thus seen to be relatively insignificant.
. . . yet you just believed it to not be exorbitant.
Do you have any experience whatsoever in project management and related cost estimating?
I do, and I believe your costs are somewhat understated…. Please round up to at least $500,000 for unspected costs, weather, and contingency.
No one became aware of the damage until spring had arrived….
Discovered by Mallory and Irvine?
“No one became aware of the damage until spring had arrived….”
Hmmm . . . then I guess they really weren’t using all the power that was supposed to be produced by that solar PV installation.
Cracked solar panels can still give out their normal output… so no change in output would have been seen. We aren’t told what the “damage” was. Did some panels fail for some reason? We aren’t told.
Well, if they are continuing to reliably produce power at the rated output for the given conditions, why the need to replace them? Somebody offended by the appearance of cracked coverglass?
re: “No one became aware of the damage until spring had arrived….”
WHICH MEANS, no one was recording operating METRICS, the operation of the panels as a whole or individual panels particularly. Year over year performance metrics SHOULD have been a tip off.
To ToldYouSo also.
If they didn’t notice the drop off, how much power did it produce to begin with?
Using just the information provided in the above article, that cannot be calculated . . . the stated “drop off” of 5% cannot be used to determine the total power being producing by the full installation.
The above article does state the full PV installation was to provide green power “to nearly 3000 people” but that does easily translate to a given number of Swiss homes, nor is it stated how much power an average home near the dam uses 24/7/365, nor is it stated if providing such green power was 100% or a lesser percentage (thus spread over more homes to bring the people count up to 3000) of a home’s electricity consumption.
If you are willing, you might be able to find the average output power rating of the Muttsee dam solar PV installation using a Web search . . . me, I don’t have have either the desire or time for such trivia.
Wouldn’t you assume the output was zero kw with the panels covered in snow???
Again – you don’t understand how solar panels work – cracked solar panels can still work fine for years, until water penetrates the glass. No reduction in output would have happened, since the ‘damage’ (which I presume is cracks in panels) only occurred within the past year. If the ‘damage’ was worse than mere cracks, how did it occur, and why aren’t we told what it was?
Would melting snow count as “water”?
They assumed that it was just hibernating?
No output if the panels were snow covered. I would guess they did not look for damage until after the thaw and output failed to resume.
Think about how much FF it took to make all that equipment, including cranes and helicopters and cables and wires, copper, steel, plastic. OMG! WTF!
SSE Renewables undertook a £50 million investment, one of the largest ever for its hydro fleet, to repower the hydro station and increase its potential generation output from 34 to 40 megawatts (MW) during optimum conditions.
The project involved the replacement of the station’s two original ‘Camel Back’ twin-runner, horizontal Francis hydro turbines, which were installed in 1933, with new modern runner technology.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/perthshires-tummel-bridge-power-station-33713744
Nearly 90 years of operations before an upgrade/refurbishment was needed. No doubt good for another 90.
Hmm …Damage not discovered until the snow melted implies that the project produced no power in the winter. Further, these arrays are typically connected with a large number of panels in series so if one panel in the series goes out the rest are also going off line like a string of Christmas lights. I’d guess that even with just 5% of the panels damaged, the capacity of the entire system would be severally compromised. Not a good idea where maintenance and repair are complicated and costly. Kinda reminds me of the floating solar array built behind a dam in India that was mangled by wind/wave action before it was even completed.
Things that are built by private enterprises tend to function as designed, not least because there is due diligence verifying fitness to purpose. When they do not work, generally the contractor loses money.
Things that are built by government funding for virtue signaling purposes do not even need to function, and frequently do not. The crony capitalist contractor never loses money. That’s the role of the taxpayer and/or the ratepayer.
Just incredible. 3 inches of snow will reduce my cabin solar panels to effectively zero output. Of course, I can just go out and rake this bit of snow off.
In 2023 we got 4 feet in a few days then 2 more inches of rain that the snow soaked up. Not really a problem for me as I couldn’t even get up there for two more weeks. I got a couple easily reached panels cleared and working well enough to keep the batteries up, and eventually spring came and melted the two foot thick cakes of ice off my other panels.
If the panels are in a location that gets snow cover every year or multiple times a year…I would just have to work out a way to put wood stove (fireplace) heating (air or water) around the panels when the snow built up to melt it to a point it could be brushed off.
The panels are on top of a distant detached garage.
It’s the way the place came. After the first winter I thought I really needed to get the panels off the roof and on to a rack on the ground. But it survived the really big winter of 23. Now I’m just dreaming of selling the place (my wife loves it).
No, damage not discovered until the snow melted does not imply that the project produced no power in the Winter! On the contrary, it suggests that there was NO change in Winter output compared to previous Winters… Secondly, you should look up ‘bypass diodes’ – solar panels are indeed connected in series, which is why they ALL have bypass diodes, and have done so for thirty years, which allow electricity to bypass a panel that is shade (or significantly damaged, which almost never happens)… You don’t understand how solar panels work – I do, I have a 12kW system which works fine, except on cloudy days. And I know that ‘climate change’ is a scam, but solar power is still cheaper than mains electricity.
Thanks for the correction. I assumed that when panels are covered in snow there would be near zero output and it would be difficult to tell if they are damaged or not. The post did say the damage was not discovered until the snow melted. So your saying they have no way to detect damage while the panels are covered? Seems odd for sophisticated and expensive installations.
Expensive, yes.
Sophisticated, not so much considering a failure rate of 5% over two-years-since-new.
12kw is very nice! Taken alone, it might be cheaper than “mains”. Not sure of that statement, my camping setup, 400 watt PV’s and a 1kwh, battery was fairly expensive. What do you do when your solar power system output 0 Kw? If your answer is you revert to the local electrical power supplier, then you are getting extremely cheap backup power rates that the other consumers are subsidizing. When everyone has “full time” solar systems, no one will be able to afford a back up power system. Who’s going to invest in a back up power system, operation and maintenance costs, personal costs, and other fixed costs, just to sit idle?
By the way, I live in Houston. I have calculated it would take 5 x 13 kWh (Tesla Power Walls) to run my residential AC units for about 10 hours in the summer! Glad you are able to get by on 12kw of solar, maybe 60 kWh/day?
Any indication of the PV module manufacturer? There also doesn’t seem to be any information about how they failed.
If the bill to replace or the penalty for delivering a failing product was to be paid by the supplier, or failing that an insurance company, or failing that the bureaucrats then it would not have been built.
Now the cost goes to the ratepayers and/or the taxpayers.
Suckers.
Who could have thought that a thing of the past could bury most of the year a photovoltaic plant at 2446m in Switzerland ?
but… but… there shouldn’t be any more snow due to man made climate roasting! /s
The Matterhorn is snow free now, isn’t it?
The Axpo website clearly shows how the panels (the ACTUAL panels, not the laughable AI picture) are mounted, at a very steep angle, so that snow falls off. I know, I’ve got solar panels, and mine aren’t as steep as that. but snow that has settled overnight rapidly falls off once sunlight hits the panels and warms them up a tiny amount. The Axpo panels are too steeply mounted for snow to pitch on them during the daytime…
It’s sad how 100% of the comments on here are written by people who believed the obvious lies of the original article. The project is not “crumbling”. Solar panels are dirt cheap – and I mean DIRT cheap nowadays, and you don’t have to rebuild the entire bloody mounting system, etc. with cranes and helicopters, just to change solar panels! Idiots!
The panels are only cheap because they are made by slaves for a country that has zero care about how much the pollute the world. I want no part of them.😒
Not discovered until spring belies your statement:
If it wasn’t discovered it either means nobody looked, or those that did couldn’t see the damage. Either way, not a good look (sic).
Sure, just like cheap shoes that fall apart after a year or two of use. Now, assume one was to want a solar PV panel that was rigorously tested and demonstrated to survive the requirement of, oh, being placed on the exterior of a remote dam in the Swiss Alps with a predicted service lifetime of 20 years minimum . . . then you’d be taking about a quality product that you can’t buy at your local “big box” store at a discount.
The AI image shown on NTZ is likely FALSE.
The location of this structure seems to be:
46.860297, 9.020500
It seems to NOT be on a pre-existing structure. Current image seems to be March, 2022. Perhaps the level of lake Muttsee was lowered to allow construction. Note the raw construction site with the kink, at the yellow Google Earth pin. YouTube video shows this kink. Large crane to the right of the pin. Use the earlier image – 7/2010 – to see the larger lake. The construction site is near the power station and lines out.
The Wikipedia entry for Muttsee shows an outline of the larger area.
I invite a creative mind to redo the above video with some more appropriate background music, some kind of a funeral march reminiscent of impending doom.
Or the Benny Hill show soundtrack music?
https://archive.org/details/tvtunes_76
Just 5% failed in the first year or two years? And those were NEW panels?
I’ll bet the rate goes up on the remaining OLD panels now, too …
Reiner Diebstahl.
In your first paragraph Mr Gosselin, it seems you omitted a very popular part of such projects – the owners of the project pay themselves very handsome wages ‘till the money runs out. That is the most important part of such schemes certainly from their standpoint. Any way of finding out how much?
How much government money was involved in this fiasco?
The government has no money. It’s all our/your money.
That’s true but I don’t give my money to scoundrels.
But they will take it from whether you like it or not
There were sound reasons for building the solar farm at this altitude, The panels were installed at an angle to shed snow. What they did not recognise that they had inadvertently built a massive dam so the snow just accumulated rather than shedding to lower ground.
Conceptually there were significant benefits for the installation as noted in the linked article and quoted here:
.So it was an engineering failure rather than a conceptual failure. Maybe the snowfall was higher than average. Few people expect snow fall to be increasing but it is the inevitable consequence of the precession cycle. Within a few thousand years, this region will be permanently buried under metres of ice.
Any dam wall has an incline, some steeper than others. If the design that snow was going to slide off a panel it was bound to land in part on the one below. Looking at photographs here and here
Finger trouble here it looks like the dam wall is very low and they do a decent job of keeping it clear of snow as it has a fairly steep wall. How the ones at the bottom cope with a load of wet snow is unclear. Some panels are installed on the spillway I’m not sure that’s a good idea.
Nice Pink Floyd reference
Yet another example of an incredibly expensive and unworkable solution to a non-existent problem.
Solar panels generating electricity when blanketed in snow?
Will wonders never cease.
Solar panels on the South African highveld don’t handle summer hail storms very well at all. From the Alps to the highveld, solar doesn’t make any sense at all except as a sort of hobby for eccentrics.