Texas hailstorm damages solar panels at 350-MW farm | Hacker News Reader

Texas hailstorm damages solar panels at 350-MW farm

renewableenergyworld.com

19 pointsandreasley19 comments

Largely a non-story, and anti-solar propaganda. It is a consideration when designing solar panels and fields, but a minor one. Simply an insurance question: insure all the panels, if a storm happens, replace the destroyed panels. With the massively falling cost of solar panels, the cost to replace will soon be trivial, making this even less of a concern.

If I have to choose between an earthquake crippling a nuclear power plant, and hail storms damaging solar panels, I know which disaster I’d prefer.

I mean the linked tweet does seem to be from some anti-renewables idiot.

Interesting if it's anti- propaganda coming from a "renewable energy world" journal.

Golf-ball sized hailstones are unusual and likely outside the design space.

Crazy that people were concerned about "chemicals leaking" -- do they think the panels are full of goo?

That's not true about hailstones. It wasn't common to have golf-ball sized hailstones, but neither was it rare. I'd say it happened once a decade or so. They were sometimes much, much larger. I have photographs of me holding one about the size of a baseball.

I'd roll my eyes at the idea of "chemical leaking" (while at the same time not exactly wanting to grind one up and sprinkle it on pizza). It's absolutely the case that places in the middle of the country that get thunderstorms and tornadoes also sometimes get ginormous hailstones, the kind that can literally kill you if you're caught outside unprotected.

That one bankrupt US solar cell company the US government loaned half a billion dollars to (Solyndra) made solar panels that were full of silicone oil.

When I was visiting Dallas a few years ago an Uber driver brought up Texas sized hail. Apparently it is a thing and is frequent enough to be something locals make chit chat about, at least in parts of the state.

P.S. you get the weirdest Uber drivers in Dallas, or at least I have. These have included a Bitcoin bro who showed me his Alcor cryonics bracelet (instructing them on how to freeze him if he dies) and someone talking about the Illuminati and their influence over hip hop music. Both got five stars and a good tip. I pay extra for that stuff.

It's not as unlikely as you'd think in Texas. The two major sources of strangers knocking on my door are landscapers and roof repairers. I have a buddy whose whole job is to canvas neighborhoods after hail storms asking if people want estimates.

Golf-ball sized hail is relatively uncommon, but general hail in Texas is probably more common than you think. We had 33 hail storms near me last year, with 4 golf ball sized reports. One was "hen egg sized", which is a terrifying thought.

It happens often enough that Texas solar farms will need to have an answer for the capex to work out. Either with tougher panels, or maybe some kind of retracting shield.

> Crazy that people were concerned about "chemicals leaking" -- do they think the panels are full of goo?

They probably don't know; I honestly don't either. If I were taking a wild guess, I'd think like 90% glass, 9% silicon, 1% some kind of probably-carcinogenic metal.

Golfball size hail storms happen all the time around Dallas. I'd say baseball size hail is unusual. Only 1-3 storms a year around the metrolplex. And grapefruit size hail is rare (thankfully! One hit the suburb next to me a few years ago and hailstones penetrated people's roof, went through the drywall into their house!)

In Texas, golf ball sized hail is a twice-a-year thing.

Baseball sized hail falls every 3 years.

Source: I am a native Texan.

I thought those solar panels are designed to survive hail stone storms.

You never design things to be indestructible. You design for a 100 year storm or something like that, or a 500 year earthquake when designing buildings. Eventually, something will happen that destroys it, but that's an acceptable risk to take. Cars aren't designed to withstand all crashes, just a certain fraction.

> Hail is becoming a prominent issue for the PV industry as more sites are being built in the central U.S. — a hail-prone region — and modules are moving towards larger formats with thinner glass.

Size and velocity of hail is an important aspect. You can design for a given average hail event and then a Big One rolls through and ruins your day. What are the chances of that Big One and is it worth the cost for more robust panels versus replacing cheaper ones should they get damaged?

My car will weather a hail storm of rice grain size no problem, but golf balls? Good luck.

Vertical solar is better, significantly less surface for hail damage.

Single axis utility scale solar usually has the capability to adjust tilt to vertical when hail is forecasted to minimize kinetic damage. Cannot speak to why that did not occur here.

> Select a tracker system that can engage in a "hail stow" mode. This stow position is typically the maximum vertical tilt the tracker system allows, which should decrease the angle of impact of most hail balls. It’s better if this automatically engages, but some systems are manually operated. Without implementing special design considerations as discussed in (Reznikov 2018), tracker systems may not fare as well in high wind regions, so certain locations may need to balance these conflicting design considerations.

https://www.energy.gov/femp/hail-damage-mitigation-solar-pho...

Everywhere I have read has said solar panels are specifically designed to handle this. Maybe these were scammer panels?

Large scale solar farms use larger panels and less protective glass. In one of the articles I read someone nearby had a roof ripped off and also got large hail.

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