Rows of gleaming blue-gray solar panels is not what you expect to see when you visit a cemetery. For most people, it's not a sight they want to see to when they visit the cemetery to place flowers on the graves of departed loved ones.
But for the people who live in the Spanish working class town of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, just outside of Barcelona, Spain, solar panels is what they see when they visit the cemetery.
The Spanish town if Santa Coloma wanted and needed an alternative energy source. The Spanish town is so densely built up with 124,000 residents crammed into 1.5 square miles, there was no place to generate electrical energy, no land room to explore and create an alternative energy source. The only available land suitable for creating an alternative energy source for the town was in the cemetery. The wide open, flat stretch of land that holds the graves of this Spanish town's loved one's was the ideal location for solar panels, it would also prove to be a tough sell to the townfolk.
The town hall and cemetery officials waged a campaign to sell the idea to the townsfolk, to erect the solar panels on top of the graves, eventually the officials won the townfolk over. The cemetery is now covered with 462 solar panels which produce the amount of alternative energy that 60 homes would use in a year..
According to reports, the solar panel installation is compatible with respect for the deceased and their families. The grave sites virtually unchanged. The Spanish town of Santa Coloma is happy with the results.
