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Painting 1 of 3 rotor blades black on 4 Norwegian turbines cut bird collisions by nearly 72 percent, and the white tailed eagles under them stopped hitting the rotors altogether
▻https://www.ecoportal.net/en/painting-norwegian-island-black-turbine-blade-white-tailed-eagles/29212

Smøla is a low treeless island off the northwest coast of Norway, and 68 wind turbines stand on it.

It also holds one of the densest breeding populations of white tailed eagles anywhere in the world.

The two have never fitted together well, and for years birds kept turning up dead in the grass beneath the rotors.

Under four of those turbines the tally included six white tailed eagles.

So a team painted a single blade on each of the four black, left everything else exactly as it was, and went back to counting.

Over the next three years the eagle tally under those four machines came back as a zero.

Switzerland bolted 5,000 solar panels onto a dam wall 8,000 feet up in the freezing Alps where everyone said solar made no sense, and the plant now makes three times more winter power than any farm down in the valleys
▻https://www.ecoportal.net/en/switzerland-5000-alpine-solar-muttsee-dam-winter-power/28487

https://pixelfed.zoo-logique.org/storage/m/_v2/493151427756716033/4c90d8e69-c5a1c2/AiYLzRfqAbMs/S6u2Zbz9DsZp9gRdU9KAVqngUBxW1R6KgSFFid7I.jpg

Why anyone would build solar up there

To understand it, you have to know Switzerland’s real energy problem.

The trouble was always the dark half of the year.

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.

Wind power, which could help in winter, has struggled to get built in Switzerland.

Normal solar is little help, because a panel on the flat lowlands makes only about a quarter of its power in the winter months.

Down in the valleys, thick winter fog can sit for weeks, and the panels beneath it barely stir.

So the country needed power in exactly the season solar usually gives the least.

Solar panels are creating an unexpected effect by forming rainfall clouds and thriving oases in the middle of the desert
▻https://www.ecoportal.net/en/solar-panels-are-creating-rain-clouds/19854

#Solar_panels may be benefiting the world in more ways than one.

We know that solar power now dominates the global #renewable #energy market, enabling millions around the world to drastically reduce not only their monthly bills, but also their carbon footprint. But another benefit has been found in the arid deserts of the world, where solar farms are found.

How have solar panels created thriving oases in the middle of the desert?