[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')ATTENBERG, Austria - The sun has stopped shining in Rattenberg. But with the aid of a few mirrors, the winter darkness that grips this small town could soon be brightened up with pockets of sunshine.

That's because sun is plentiful less than 10 minutes' walk from the town and from Rat Mountain, the 3,000-foot hill that blocks its sunlight between November and February each year.

The solution: 30 heliostats, essentially rotating mirrors, mounted on a hillside to grab sunshine off reflectors from the neighboring village of Kramsach.

Bartenbach Lichtlabor GmbH, the Austrian company behind the idea, has already used mirrors for lighting projects around the world -- sunshine into European basements and railroad stations or nighttime illumination of a mosque in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.

[Free]

Yeah, fascinating, isn't it? Might be a little test case for future mirror and solar energy applications where many things can be learned...

On the other hand I think it is a very inefficient and costly solution - people are already implementing the much more efficient and cheap one -just move away!
As mentioned in the article, many did it already. It makes no sense to keep up a settlement that only was founded hundreds of years ago at that dark place because of then plausible (security) reasons, but which are now obsolete...

[frankthetank]

Wasn't Russian going to light up Siberia a while back? I thought i remember reading that in Popular Mechanics??

I'd take some sun right now!