Places where the sun does indeed shine

Quick! Where is the weirdest place you’d expect to find a solar panel? If you said cemetery, give yourself five points. Outhouse garners ten points. If you said an Amish outhouse, ding! You’ve won the bonus prize.

A suburb of Barcelona has placed 462 solar panels over its multi-storey mausoleums. The solar panels cover less than 5% of the total surface area of the cemetery, but will create enough energy each year to supply the needs of 60 homes.

There are plans to install more, meaning the cemetery has the potential to triple the amount of electricity generated. One of only a few open, sunny places in the crowded city of 124,000, the cemetery but will keep about 62 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere every year.

The West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island has a solar powered outhouse. Of course it does (and it’s lovely – sporting the best view from a loo in all of Canada). More surprisingly, the Amish are also the leading per-capita adopters of solar in Pennsylvania. Solar panels align with Amish values of self-sufficiency and moderation.

In Rizhao City, which means City of Sunshine in Chinese, 99 per cent of households in the central districts use solar water heaters, and most traffic signals, street and park lights are powered by photovoltaic (PV) solar cells.

It is encouraging that solar is becoming more and more accessible. Though initial reaction to solar cemeteries and outhouses was disdain, the public are generally embracing sunlight as the fuel of the future.

And if the Amish are doing it…