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Baseball-sized hail destroys Scottsbluff solar farm
- stevenjgarner 3y agoI'm assuming that wind-driven "Baseball-Sized Hail" might also have a detrimental affect on wind turbine blades?
- passwordoops 3y agoI imagine it would have a detrimental effect on most things, except maybe power generation behind thick concrete walls
- dylan604 3y agoso nuclear power plants are safe. got it.
- cma 3y agoTexas did have an unplanned reactor shutdown when it got a little cold though.
- dylan604 3y agoNot winterizing the plumbing is a totally different concept than what's being discussed.
- gpm 3y agoNot winterizing the plumbing and not hailerizing the equipment actually sounds pretty equivalent to me.
- anonym29 3y agoWith precisely zero deaths due to radiation, given the automated plant safety systems detected that the input line for the cooling water had frozen, and automatically shut down the reactor. This was nothing short of complete success from a nuclear energy safety perspective. Also, side rant: Everyone likes to shit on Texas for not winterizing for temperatures they never used to receive (including on the country-leading wind and solar installations - Texas produces more renewable energy than any other state), but Seattle seems to gets a free pass for letting people die of heat exhaustion in that 2021 heat wave because fewer than half of residential buildings there have ANY kind of A/C system, while NYC routinely gets a pass for not having been prepared for major storm surges and deadly flooding that they never used to receive. Climate change kills no matter where you're from, nobody's got a perfect setup for this new world we're living in. Also, FWIW, even including that grid outage in Texas, Texas' grid is still far more reliable from an total system uptime percentage perspective than either interconnect is. The state with the least reliable electric grid in the country is in California.
- rocket_surgeron 3y ago[dead]
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y agoStation transformers are usually out in the open, because airflow for cooling is critical. Nuclear power plants have lots of very big transformers that aren't under concrete roofs.
- greenthrow 3y agoPanels are generally warranteed for up to a certain windspeed and up to a certain size hail. Mine are up to roughly golf ball sized and 80mph wind. Beyond that, you need insurance just like anything else that's valuable and subject to nature.
- bsenftner 3y agoSounds like a job for collapsible hail nets, like used at fruit farms.
- FeistySkink 3y agoWould having permanent nets severely affect the efficiency? Specifically for baseball-sized hail, i.e. large gaps between threads.
- foxhop 3y agoshade causes the panel to shut off or under perform.
- sumtechguy 3y agoThere is one vid of a guy on YT talking about his daily drop off in power. Turns out it was 1 small cable shading out one small part of a panel Which was enough to shut the whole panel down. His conclusion was the way they were wired up caused it to stop working due to the shade on one set of cells.
- ars 3y agoThat's because it was wired with a single inverter for the whole string. So it can only generate power based on the weakest panel. Instead you can use micro-inverters by each panel. Or optimizer's which are dc-dc converters and basically do the same thing. This is very common when you have a chimney, and the shadow from it moves around. I think installations where it's all on a single inverter are not very common - a cloud moving in the sky will mess with the entire array, it's just not a very good way to design it.
- graeber_28927 3y ago> The Federal Emergency Management Agency ranks this area in its the highest category for hail risk on the national index. > [Grant Otten, media relations specialist] said the panels are designed to withstand hail, but the size of the hail Friday was exceptional. I started to worry for the installation on my parents' house, but according to the article, this happened on a high risk location within the American Continent, and was still considered unusual there.
- dylan604 3y agoYeah, baseball sized hail is not a normal thing in my area. Marble sized hail is the normal large size with pea sized hail more frequent. So when the weather alerts start telling you a storm has a history of tennis ball to baseball sized hail, it's one you look to avoid. The marble sized hail is enough to ding metal. Golf ball sized hail will damage trees and smash glass. I've never personally experienced baseball sized hail, but on the day that I ever do, I'll have to question what I did to piss off god to that point.
- bartislartfast 3y ago> Yeah, baseball sized hail is not a normal thing in my area. yet
- dylan604 3y agoThe conditions to create a hail stone that large are just not easy to create. If you consider the weight of a piece of ice the size of a baseball, then consider the strength of air currents required to keep pushing that bit of mass around in the air so it doesn't fall to the ground sooner you might see why it is rare for that size of stone to be so normal. Even with global warming, those are some serious currents required.
- peteradio 3y agoI wonder what the minimum size is to be worried about. Presumably we are going to find higher insurance premiums for installs that need to be regularly repaired due to hail damage. I think my own home gets what I would consider "car damaging" hail once every 3 years.
- jmclnx 3y agoWell I guess this will not be covered by insurance (act of god and all). Also as someone said, collapsible hail nets, which I never heard of, would have helped. I wonder why that was not thought of by the solar farm people, especially since they are in "thunder alley". Would hail nets reduce efficiency of the far a bit ? If I had to guess, the real reason is this was built on the cheap.
- paulsutter 3y agoYou’d evaluate the idea of a net based on the insurance cost savings, taking into account incidence rates and cost
- ianai 3y agoI experienced a once in 100 year hailstorm once in the west. It would probably be more cost than it’s worth. They seem to spring up with little warning, are highly localized, and last mere minutes. Edit-and I live close to this area. We could generate electricity for the entire human race here north of 360 days per year and the land is largely empty.
- dylan604 3y agoThey spring up with little warning if you're visiting the area and are not accustomed to paying attention to the weather forecast. It also sounds like you might be from a part of the world where weather is presented by a TV personality rather than a meteorologist. In the parts of the world where severe weather happens, actual meteorologists present the weather and are less concerned about looking good on TV. While I like to make fun of forecasts as much as the next person, they are impressively accurate. Once the storm systems do start popping up, the information from the tools they have available to them today is incredible. Please, do not confuse your inexperience with storms as the norm for those that do.
- thedougd 3y agoMost insurance is for acts of God. Wind, Hail, Flood...
- mikece 3y agoI wonder how much efficiency would be lost by using a thicker glass -- or even bulletproof material -- on the panels. I imagine this has been considered but there are technical and financial reasons not to.
- bombcar 3y agoIt’s cheaper to just replace the panels if it happens (and probably get a capacity upgrade) Even clear glass heats up so it takes some of the energy the panel wants.
- starwatch 3y agoI reckon you could suspend a net above each solar panel. Just make the gaps a bit smaller than the diameter of a hailstone that would cause damage. That'd be quite a bit cheaper.
- MisterTea 3y agoNets have their own issues as they can ensnare birds and trap debris blown around by the wind.
- dredmorbius 3y agoNets which could be deployed (manually or automatically) during periods of high-risk for hail might be an alternative. Minimises the risks you highlight, maximises protection of the solar panels themselves. In this case, the netting need not even be particularly transparent. You're looking for loss-minimisation, rather than maximising electrical production at all times. So a fairly thick or heavy webbing might work. Keep in mind that as the damage inflicted increases with the kinetic energy, that is, with the square of velocity, even a net or webbing which permitted contact of hail with panels but at significantly reduced speed should serve to avoid most damage.
- sparrish 3y agoI think you'd need a kevlar net to catch baseball sized hail going 150mph and that won't be cheap.
- vfclists 3y agoI have never quite understood how and why reliable energy should be produced from unreliable weather, and from what we gather climate change means the weather is going to become even more erratic.
- karkisuni 3y agostore unreliable energy in batteries and release reliable energy
- matthewmacleod 3y agoAll sources of energy are unreliable to some extent – what matters is modelling that to understand the risk and put appropriate mitigations in place. For sources which have more inherent variability (such as solar or wind) the mitigation is often storage or over-provisioning. The addition of appropriate mitigations allows us to derive an energy source with the desired level of reliability. The cost of those mitigations (i.e. more storage required with erratic renewables) needs to then be traded off against other energy sources and the associated costs.
- ceejayoz 3y ago> I have never quite understood how reliable energy can be produced from unreliable weather... You build in more than one spot, with enough capacity and energy storage to account for fluctuations. The chances of it being cloudy and windless everywhere all at once is slim.
- robertlagrant 3y ago> The chances of it being cloudy and windless everywhere all at once is slim. Well. That statement means every location needs to generate all power needed through both methods.
- jncfhnb 3y agoOr just a sampling of areas coupled with batteries and a transmission grid
- ortusdux 3y agoI was looking through NOAA's database of geoengineering permits reciently and a surprising number of them were for hail reduction. I would not be surprised to see an uptick. https://library.noaa.gov/Collections/Digital-Collections/Weather-Modification-Project-Reports https://library.noaa.gov/Collections/Digital-Collections/Wea... The Western Kansas Weather Modification Program claims a 27-35% reduction in hail and benefit/cost ratio of up to 37:1, and they are primarily targeting crop protection. I wonder how precise they can be. https://www.gmd1.org/WMP_brochure_revised_use_pg_2_&_3_final.pdf https://www.gmd1.org/WMP_brochure_revised_use_pg_2_&_3_final...
- Jeff_Brown 3y agoBaseball-sized hail!? Did it have no effect outside of the solar farm? Does everyone in Nebraska park indoors? Was nobody caught put in the street? Are the houses made of stone?
- bombcar 3y agoCars get totaled by much smaller hail. I’ve hidden under a bridge when a green storm came by. And Nebraska is mostly empty so much falls on nothing. Roof insurance pays out and crews come from as far away as Arizona to feast and the cycle continues. These big hailstorms seem to be once in ten years or so.
- ChumpGPT 3y ago>green storm When they're green, you know there is hail and perhaps even a tornado inside somewhere. Beautiful but terrifying all at the same time.
- api 3y agoA hailnado?
- dredmorbius 3y agoIt's not the wind that's damaging so much as the things the wind is carrying. Hail. Rocks. Planks. Cows...
- dredmorbius 3y agoLate edit: sharks.
- Jeff_Brown 3y agoHow fast does air have to go to hurt your face?
- filereaper 3y agoNot in Nebraska but in the Texas Triangle, thinking of getting Solar panels and was wondering about hail as well. We get hail here, but haven't seen baseball sized hail yet. Anyone have any insights on this?
- hotpotamus 3y agoI've been looking at panels and one of the specs that at least some have included is a hail-strike rating.
- dredmorbius 3y agoInsurance. Risk profiling. Hail-rating. Preemptive / mitigating measures (see discussion of nets or webbing elsewhere in this thread).
- opwieurposiu 3y agoMost panels will handle up to ping-pong size no problem. Solar front-sheet glass has been pretty highly optimized over the years. In the case you do get damage, the actual panels are only about 1/4 of the total system cost. So the panels are pretty cheap to replace, assuming you picked a common size.
- mikro2nd 3y ago(speaking as someone who has just recently installed a solar installation): The panels are around 15% of the system cost (small-scale residential system, so things will likely be different for municipal/grid-scale systems -- I can't speak to those...)
- geocrasher 3y agoLocation, Location, Location.
- 404mm 3y agoTranslates into: Money, Money, Money.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoThe key is the planners of this project were cash burning idiots for ignoring the FEMA risk map. If they had any business sense, they would've completed a profit forecast maximizing insolation while minimizing natural hazards and remoteness for construction and maintenance costs.
- donatj 3y agoOoh I never even considered this. A fair number of my neighbors installed solar panels on their roofs in recent years but we generally get large hail every couple years. I’ll be keeping an eye on their roofs.
- mikro2nd 3y agoSpeaking as someone who recently installed solar panels on the roof... you get insurance! Not a big deal.
- almost_usual 3y agoUntil premiums skyrocket and insurance companies decide it’s better to not cover it.
- BugsJustFindMe 3y agoThe photo is pretty interesting in that some whole panels are completely unscathed right next to ones that are literally covered in impact craters. Maybe they should selectively breed the surviving panels together to get a new generation of more resilient panels. Only slightly tongue-in-cheek. It's very unlikely that the unscathed panels had no impacts at all right next to panels that had dozens of them. So the surviving panels must have just been meaningfully more robust than the others.
- jayrot 3y agoWW2 airplane armoring?
- floatrock 3y ago> So the surviving panels must have just been meaningfully more robust than the others. Or the variability was in the hail -- panels are designed for this kind of weather to some degree, but sometimes you get a storm on the edge of the design limits.
- chriswep 3y agothe more likely explanation seems to me that not all panels were hit by a sufficiently large hailstone to cause an initial break. once the structural integrity of a panel is broken, smaller stones can damage it further that wouldn't have otherwise..
- gpm 3y agoProbably not just the size of the hail that hit it, but where the big pieces hit it. At a first guess they're using tempered glass, and that's a lot more likely to fracture if you hit it near the corners than the centre.
- hammock 3y agoWould be cool to model an RNG off of this photo. I''m sure people have already tried raindrop fall patterns, etc
- thatguy0900 3y ago
- colordrops 3y agoWhat happens if someone gets caught outside during one of these events? Are they deadly?
- ncr100 3y agohttps://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/what-are-your-chances-of-being-killed-by-hail-in-the-us/333722 https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/what-are-your-ch... Injury. Low likelihood of death, though possible.
- djbusby 3y agoCan be. Smaller hail (~3mm) will leave marks on your skin (depending on density/velocity). A baseball (72mm) of ice (~195g) at 11m/s to the head could kill. Very unlikely. Do not play in hail or thunderstorms.
- bilsbie 3y agoDoesn’t the solar roof use glass that’s impervious to hail?
- 6D794163636F756 3y agoSure. Just like a bullet proof vest is impervious to bullets. It's still not gonna work against a Rheinmetall Rh-120 120 mm smoothbore tank gun
- markhahn 3y agocost. not just purchase cost either - it would decrease efficiency.
- aidenn0 3y agoDefine "hail" If it gets hit by hail the size of a Volkswagen, its going to be done in. If it gets hit by pebble sized hail it's probably fine (and so are these solar panels). Baseball sized hail is pretty nasty stuff. Angle and location of impact is going to affect the outcome.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- CottonMcKnight 3y agoWhile this article is reasonably fact-based, just so everyone is aware of this paper's agenda, check the titles of other articles at the bottom: * Wyoming Oil And Gas Held Back More By Taxes Than Regulation, Says Industry Group * John Kerry's Claim Climate Change Kills 15 Million a Year Draws Ethics Complaint * US House Stands Against Biden's War On Gas Stoves: Will The Senate Do The Same?
- PM_me_your_math 3y agoI don't get. What is wrong with pointing those things out? It's not like you can hide objective facts.
- TRiG_Ireland 3y agoThanks for pointing that out. I hadn't noticed it. The "war on gas stoves" is such obviously manufactured culture war outrage bait.
- cs702 3y ago"Baseball-sized" hail will do that. It will also break or badly damage a lot of other things, including buildings, homes, automobiles, animals, and people. For example, here are some pictures of car damage: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=giant%20hail%20car%20damage https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=giant%20hail%20car%... . We are, after all, talking about big balls of ice hurling down from the sky, their speed increasing by 32.2 feet/second every second.
- arbuge 3y ago> their speed increasing by 32.2 feet/second every second. Until terminal velocity is reached of course, although wind speeds in the impact zone could also add to that.
- cs702 3y agoYes. That doesn't make it any less scary, though -- ice balls are pretty aerodynamic!
- dredmorbius 3y agoStorm cells can experience tremendous downdrafts, such that falling objects (rain, hail, small children, etc.) can see higher-than-gravitational acceleration. This is especially the case in a downburst event, where cold air suddenly collapses down through the cloud column. Which might itself be associated with / a trigger for hail formation. These downdrafts (as well as the resulting horizontal outflows of air near ground-level) have caused a number of aircraft accidents, a combination of both trying to fly through a descending air column and the sudden changes in registered airspeed as the craft first fights a strong headwind (increasing lift), then experiences a strong tailwind (decreasing it), and even causing the aircraft to stall from insufficient airspeed.
- sumtechguy 3y agoHad a friend that lives in that area. This happened a few years ago. He had just bought a new mustang. 2 weeks later its in the shop for hail damage. Hundreds of dents. That stuff is no joke.
- alex_young 3y agoIf you’ve ever seen a car that was in a storm like this it isn’t all that surprising that some glass was broken too. Big hail destroys everything.
- tejtm 3y agoIn extreme cases they could be made to flip or fold to present an armored back, but you would have to be very sure it mattered enough.
- xg15 3y agoI'm all for taking climate change seriously, but here it seems rather easy to "adapt" to the new conditions: So future solar farms need even stronger mechanical protection of the light-receiving surfaces: If there is some magical high-tech material that would withstand those forces while still being sufficiently transparent in normal operation, that could be used. Otherwise, the solution seems relatively low tech for me: install some way to protect the panels during storms - e.g. by some kind of durable "blind" that can be closed in bad weather or by making the panels able to turn 180° and flip the light sensitive surface towards the ground.
- prometheon1 3y agoInteresting that this is the top comment right now. My initial reaction is more along the lines of: "What?! Baseball-sized hail?! Can we still let our children play outside?!"
- xg15 3y agoThe post only has one upvote though (as of now), so I think the rank is more a coincidence (or the mods and/or algorithm liked it for some reason)