Uddrag fra ABC13/ Fox News Digital
In the latest of countless cautionary tales about green energy, a large-scale Texas solar farm has been devastated by a hail storm that took much of the facility off-line for an unknown duration.
The March 15 storm battered thousands of panels with hail described as anywhere between golf ball- and baseball-sized. “They look like somebody took a shotgun and blasted it into the air and let the pellets fall down and shatter holes all in them,” awestruck Fort Bend County resident Nick Kaminski told ABC 13. Actually, the damage looks much more like it was inflicted with direct fire:
Located about 43 miles southwest of downtown Houston, the Fighting Jays Solar farm is a joint venture of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and AP Solar Holdings LLC. Sprawling across 3300 acres, it’s billed as promising 350 MW of capacity. Or, at least, it was before Mother Nature intervened.
Flyover video showed the sweeping breadth of the destruction:
A spokeswoman for GOP Rep. Troy Nehls, whose district encompasses the solar farm, told Fox News Digital that the incident raises serious questions about where solar farms are built, and undermines green zealots’ belief that fossil fuels can be retired anytime soon:
“As far as solar farms being damaged where hail and tornadoes are common, those companies knowingly run the risk of building solar panel farms in these areas. Events like this underscore the importance of having an all-of-the-above energy approach to meet our energy needs and showcase how our country cannot solely rely on or fully transition to renewable energy sources like this.“
Some residents worried that cadmium telluride, a toxic ingredient of some solar panels, would find its way into the local soil and well water. However, Copenhagen Investment Partners reassured Fox that “the silicon-based panels contain no cadmium telluride and we have identified no risk to the local community or the environment.”
Nonetheless, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has dispatched investigators to make their own assessment of the health implications.
The sweeping ruin witnessed at the Fighting Jays solar farm is far from unique. A 2019 hail disaster caused roughly $70 to $80 million in damage to the Midway Solar farm in West Texas. Last June, a hailstorm in Nebraska destroyed nearly every last panel at a solar farm north of Scottsbluff: Of 14,000 panels, 13,650 were instantly turned into trash, though a spokesman for the facility unconvincingly assured a reporter that the goal was for the panels to be recycled.
These and other episodes underscore a troubling trade-off in solar power: States with abundant sunshine are simultaneously more prone to hailstorms and tornados.
