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Comment by gaazoh | Hacker News Reader

This is Switzerland, where land is not as plentiful as in Texas, not by a long shot.

Plus, the support structure is free in this case, it's definitely cheaper to lay solar panels on those dishes than tearing them down just to lay panels on the floor. Also, having solar panels laying flat on ground level sounds like skimming on infrastructure to save money short term but having to pay higher maintenance long term: you have to keep the panels relatively clean for them to work, having them slanted and elevated a bit means that less dirt get on top of them and rain washes most of it regularly.

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My guess is: the problem is not the price of the land or the price of the structure, but the permits. In Switzerland, you can put solar panels on existing buildings without requiring a permit.

As the article says, there are many "large" solar panel projects planned in Switzerland, specially in the mountains, where the snow will reflect the light and increase electricity production in winter (where electricity is the most expensive). But it takes a very long time (sometimes many, many years) until those projects are approved, if they are approved at all. This is known to be a problem, and government did try to speed this up, but it still is far too slow. (I'm Swiss.)

Texas uses robot vacuum cleaners. Not a lot of rain. Definitely a sweet spot for them.

Anyway. I'd guess they'd do better to lay them on the ground next to those dishes, than the expense of climbing up there and fastening them to that massively expensive superstructure. Not to mention the danger to life and limb, climbing around up there.

Generally speaking it's just a mistake to mount solar panels in some difficult-to-reach expensive place.

Optimal: A large flat space near the existing grid, with generous road access and clearance. On cheap land and cheap supports. Where it can be serviced, not too far from the service center.

Those dishes fail on half of those metrics.

What you're describing doesn't exist in Switzerland, which you could tell by doing a quick Google Maps view.

Nothing in Switzerland is cheap, least of all land. Practically nothing in Switzerland is flat either. What little flat land we have is used for agriculture and cities.

Turns out south-facing mountain slopes are nearly ideal for solar panels. From a quick Google Maps view, the country is about half that kind of terrain.

And nobody is going to convince me you can't find the same square footage as, my god, some radio dishes! somewhere in Switzerland.

No, this whole OP article is eco-theatre.

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