A news report on hail damage to a solar farm near Houston.
A few thoughts from watching the video…
I’m not worried about chemicals found in the solar panels. I doubt those materials would leak into the environment, even if the outside glass is damaged.
Several of the panels don’t appear to be damaged at all, while the others are almost completely opaque. Either a) the undamaged panels are made of a different material that can withstand a hail stone, or b) for the damaged panels, one large stone started the damage, which then made it easier for smaller stones to produce more damage. Either way, it looks like about half of the panels appear to have some damage.
Almost as good as putting a nuke plant on an earthquake fault line.
Look, disasters are gonna happen. What you want to do is make sure they don’t trigger another disaster, bigger than the first. Broken solar panels? OK. I bet there are tons of car dealer lots around there with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars worth of dented cars. (Disclosure: Mrs. Goofy’s car was totaled by a hail storm several years ago which took out the back window, windshield, and every body panel except the left front. Don’t know how that one got away, but there you have it.)
