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Wednesday’s Energy Absurdity: Man, Nobody Could Have Possibly Seen This One Coming! Oh, Wait...Baseball-Sized Hail Smashing Into Panels At 150 MPH Destroys Scottsbluff Solar Farm
Excerpt:
Writing at CowboyStateDaily.com, Kevin Killough reports that a 5.2 megawatt solar array outside Scottsbluff, Nebraska was destroyed Monday by a supercell thunderstorm which produced baseball-size hail.
Man, nobody could’ve possibly seen that one coming, right?
Baseball-sized hail took out a solar farm in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, on Monday, part of a giant supercell thunderhead that moved across eastern Wyoming and into Nebraska.
The hail shattered most of the panels on the 5.2-megawatt solar project, sparing an odd panel like missing teeth in a white smile.
Don Day, Cowboy State Daily meteorologist, said the hail would have reached terminal velocity during its descent, which is the maximum speed an object will reach when falling. The hail would have likely struck the panels going 100 to 150 mph.
Kevin Spencer, Scottsbluff city manager, told Cowboy State Daily the Nebraska Public Power District, which owns the solar farm, is still assessing the damage, but it’s going to need some repairs.
“Just by looking at it, it looks destroyed to me,” Spencer said.
Spencer said there’s more to a solar farm than just the panels, and so some of the equipment at the farm might have survived the storm. He said he was previously told the panels were hail proof, but that might have meant hail up to a certain size.
Oh, well, see, it was “hail proof,” but maybe only against “hail up to a certain size.”
You just cannot make this stuff up. You really can’t.
It is important to point out here that in this part of the U.S., hailstorms are not at all uncommon. They are a regular, historic feature of the region’s weather patterns. This storm had nothing to do with “climate change,” though many will no doubt claim otherwise. It had to do with “weather,” plain and simple.
So, who cleans this mess up?
Will the shattered panels be recycled?
If not, how will they be disposed of, and who is responsible?
Will some residents go without power now, or was this solar farm just a virtue-signaling luxury item?
Those are all questions that will need to be asked and answered in the coming days.
How could no one involved in this project have seen this coming?
