Gravesite provides resting place for solar energy project

Solar panels provide new energy to a place that’s literally dead in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a town near Barcelona, Spain. The mausoleums at the town’s cemetery play host to 462 solar panels—enough to provide power to 60 homes a year. The Associated Press reports that the graveyard was “just about the only viable spot to move ahead with [Santa Coloma’s] solar energy program.” Flat, open, sunny land is rare there, as the town’s 124,000 residents live within only 1.5 square miles. The solar panels take up less than 5 percent of the total surface area of the cemetery, which holds the remains of about 57,000 people.