Looks expensive. The grey ones are the broken ones.
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I feel like this is one of those things that definitely has to have happened before now; after all, grid-scale solar isn’t something we’ve just started doing in the last two or three years, we’ve been at it for at least 15 that I know of. And hail isn’t exactly a new phenomenon in TX. So I wonder why we’re hearing about it like it’s news. Is this fossil fuel funded bad press? Did they skimp on protection they shouldn’t have?
It’s Texas. So without doing any research, it’s *probably all of the above and also there’s corruption in there somewhere…
Idk, here in the PNW I had only seen hail once in the past 10 years, this spring it has hailed over a dozen times… climate change is wild
Ah, the solar power epicenter that is the PNW.
I meant that yes hail happens in Texas, but these freak storms are getting worse and it is a new phenomenon. Also most houses around here have solar
Actually, I guess I was trying to be funny. And me having 25kW of solar panels is even crazier, because I’m an afternoon’s drive away from the Arctic Circle. In winter, we get about 6 hours of sunlight a day, at a ridiculously terrible angle.
Really? I grew up near Seattle (>20+ years ago) and I remember getting hail fairly frequently, probably more frequently than snow, at least in my neighborhood. Then again, the hail was quite small and only lasted a few seconds to a minute most of the time.
I lived in Seattle for a while and it never hailed, late 20-teens, but in the Willamette valley it is pretty rare, yet it has been hailing every few days this spring/early spring, we also have been having lightning storms. It is an unusual beginning to the yeat
Huh, I’ll have to ask my parents, who still live near Seattle. I left around the late 2000s, so I’m mostly talking about the 90s and early 2000s. It never hailed a lot (like 2-3 times/year), and thunderstorms happened a few times in the spring.
That said, more than 5 times in the spring would definitely be unusual. That, plus the bonkers 100F+ weather two years ago (I think? I wasn’t there) is kinda nuts.
Lol it’s been well over 110f every summer for the last 8 years in the valley…
https://www.plantmaps.com/en/us/climate/extremes/f/oregon-record-high-low-temperatures
theres more solar than ever, the news is doing less interesting things now than it ever has been. Big oil is losing more money at the mere smell of none oil based power.
Makes sense really.
My 200W panel just got slammed camping over xmas and not a spot of damage on it—its made to have some sort of protection from hail strikes. Meanwhile the 4×4 got smashed windows and dents all over.
It might have cracks in the silicon crystal that might burn in over time.
But yeah, impressive that it could take this big of hail balls without braking the glass.
Wow that’s a huge hail ball! I get excited when they’re marble-sized.
There’s a truck in my neighbourhood that was hit by hail. The owner repainted it, but left the dents. He has a little bumper sticker explaining what happened. It looks pretty amazing, IMO, and must be an awesome conversation starter.
It’s not uncommon where I live, but certainly starts conversations of people comparing their worst storms. My own favourite was the damage done to a massive carlot near the docks and airport that stored new cars coming into the country to freight out around the state. Thousands of cars, no cover. They all went on sale massively discounted as hail damaged but the downside being people couldn’t get additional non-compulsary insurance until repaired. So new car, but probably barely making a saving after fixing it all. Or, just leave it and o ly have compulsory insurance, which only covers damage you do to public property with your car and not your car or other people’s.
Placing hardware cloth or similar over the panels with a couple inches of stand-off should prevent most any damage from even lege hail. It will probably reduce sunlight by a few percent across the entire field, but considering the storms Texas gets it would likely be worth it in the long run instead of having most of an entire farm wrecked.
But then Texas isn’t big on protecting their power sources from environmental impacts, are they.
Nah, how else will Republicans cry that solar energy is bad, and that we need coal and oil?
How strong that cloth and attachment would need to be to survive gusts from a storm that’s capable of generating such big hail?
Hardware cloth is metal mesh, so any wind strong enough to remove it would have long since destroyed the panel it was attached to thanks to the surface area of the panel. The standoffs would probably need to be “L” tabs or similar arranged in a grid across the face of the panel. Heck, just erecting a screen over the entire field would probably be better and cheaper than doing individual panels, but a field-size cover would probably end up with needing higher strength posts to mount it because of the greater drag over surface area. That said, I’m not an engineer, so the most efficient and effective method of protection is going to have to come from someone with more knowledge than my guesswork.
Yeah, might want a metal grating/mesh or something instead. Should do better in the wind.
Hardware cloth is a metal mesh.
Ah okay, I wasn’t familiar with the terminology.
the likelihood that you get hail that is capable of damaging pretty robust fabric is incredibly unlikely, and will start damaging other things. So you really only need to protect against the most common types of hail.
Why are we so dumb? Just put a large rolling cover over solar fields. Truck beds have this “technology”.
Keeping political power matters. Actual function, like electrical power, does not. They would rather rule an empire of dirt than be an ensign in starfleet.
Wow. It was only after reading comments on this post until that I remembered WHY I was more than happy to leave Reddit behind. Too bad so many of these diseased children moved over here.
It took just one comment: ’ What is “4000ac”? ’ to start the drool-fest.
Better find a new place then.
What is “4000ac”?
Armor Class,
It is very hard to hit
Hailstorm was consistently rolling them nat 20s, need to check for loaded dice
I mean, make enough attacks and you’re bound to make a ton of 20s in there.
It was much easier to hit in 2nd edition.
but I have … a plus 2 modifier with improvised thrown weapons? does it still miss?
4000 acre?
Americans inventing new freedom units instead of using squared meters…
Before the enactment of the metric system, many countries in Europe used their own official acres. In France, the traditional unit of area was the arpent carré, a measure based on the Roman system of land measurement. The acre was used only in Normandy (and neighbouring places outside its traditional borders), but its value varied greatly across Normandy, ranging from 3,632 to 9,725 square metres, with 8,172 square metres being the most frequent value.[clarification needed] But inside the same pays of Normandy, for instance in pays de Caux, the farmers (still in the 20th century) made the difference between the grande acre (68 ares, 66 centiares) and the petite acre (56 to 65 ca).[50] The Normandy acre was usually divided in 4 vergées (roods) and 160 square perches, like the English acre.
*Europeans invented the acre 1000 yeats ago
Before the enactment of the metric system
Yes… long before…
So backwards…
If by “Americans inventing” you mean “Europeans inventing” then yes
Non English Europeans aren’t savages who use non metric units. 🧐 Smh
Bitch it was the romans who “invented” most of the units.
And unless I see y’all adopting metric time in the near future I frankly don’t want to hear about how oh so stupid anyone who isn’t doing metric is.
Plus there’s just the idiocy of it being base 10 when base 36 is so much better, uses the whole keyspace of numerals and latin alphabet letters, “10” is a perfect square that’s the product of two other perfect squares, plus “10” has 9 factors, it has a number of factors equal to one of the perfect squares that it factors into!
It’s good when the people of eternal Rome use the old measurements, for they were the citizens of the coolest empire of our time.
It’s not good when the americant’s use it to measure screaming eagles per burger or something. 🧐
Something something metric units something 🧐
If “European countries” excludes most European countries then yes European countries didn’t use acres.
I’ll convert it to a metric unit for you so it’s easier to visualize: the solar farm is 2*10^27 square Angstroms.
Hope that helps!
Finally, a unit i can get behind
How many Texas’ is that?
Texas’s?
Texi?That is actually helpful. It’s easy to convert from Angstroms (10^-10 m) to meters, to kilometers (10^3 m). That means it’s all just basic arithmetic. 27 - 2*(10 + 3) = 27 - 26 = 1. So, it’s 2*10^1 square km, or 20 square km.
at least it doesnt fall prey to the ambiguity provided by using square meters or m^2.
Oh, oh no. Thinking isn’t your strong suit is it?
one hectare contains about 2.47 acres
4000 acres A unit of measurement for plots of land
4000 alternating currents.
4000 asshole cunts
Don’t tread on my private infrastructure!!
I think even when damaged they still produce.
More modern vertical arrays might fair better in hurricane-prone areas.
Heliostats seem to be getting popular on large solar farms. You could use them to stow the panels upright to avoid damage in these circumstances.
sucks to be the insurance in this case
Technology is fragile.
Looked expensive. Looks like garbage now.
Saladbar sneeze guard stonks to the moon!
(Because a hail size sneeze guard would have stopped hail size hail is the joke, you humorless fucks.)
Take your medicine.
Thanks Empricorn’s mom and or dad for such a clever, witty, original, child.
May this child one day bring you some value.
“Am I out-of-touch?”
No, it’s all the people I insulted with my edited comment who are wrong!
Please. Stop double and tripling-down on bad comments and just take the L…
How the fuck does a sneeze guard insult anyone.
If you are, it definitely isn’t me who is wrong.
(And the only edit was the comment, you humorless fuck)
