Mother nature knows best...

[The Natural Philosopher]

What's left of a Texas solar farm after a hailstorm...

[GB]

It seems to be a well-known issue, to which there's a well-known solution:

[Chris Hogg]

They have BIG hailstones in Texas

but not world record sizes

I see on WUWT that a farmer local to that solar farm is worried about his water supply being contaminated by nasties leaching out of the damaged panels.

Unfortunately they seldom if ever reach those sizes in the UK, so our green and pleasant land will continue to be blighted by solar farms for the foreseeable future.

[The Natural Philosopher]

All I see is blurred text. Did you actually read it?

[The Natural Philosopher]

I doubt it. not enough sun, and not enough subsidy

[Fredxx]

There are numerous techniques to use multiple images to improve overall resolution.

I'm sure the concept is way beyond your comprehension, or indeed near religious beliefs when it comes to diesel cars and fires in a car park.

Do you love diesel cars so much you cannot bear the thought of just one diesel car burning down a whole car park together with 1400 cars?

[John Rumm]

How good is your latin? Since if you did manage to remove the blur from that "text" you would see it is just "Lorem Ipsum" placeholder text.

Having said that, the site authors seem to have made a good job making it hard to dodge the paywall, but I would doc them points for also including a second full copy of the articles text in the html source, in English, in addition to the blurred latin copy :-)

tl;dr - they describe a hail "early warning system" used to trigger panel rotators *ON ALL THE PANELS*, that would rotate them out of direct path of the hail storm. Does not sound like something that will be particularly cost effective on an array spanning 1000s of acres.

[Colin Bignell]

Probably only practical on arrays that already have steering mechanisms to track the sun. I would, however, have thought that hailstone guards would be possible. I am think either of fixed mesh guards, which admittedly slightly would reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the panels, or a solid guard that hinges up over the panels when hailstones are detected or expected. Although costly, they might be cheaper than replacing thousands of acres of arrays so, even if the owners don't want them, their insurers might.

[GB]

I don't know about costs, but a pivot system could have two uses:

1) Keep the panels at 90 degrees to the sun throughout the day, to absorb maximum energy. 2) Rotate the panels so they are horizontal with the glass downwards when storms are expected, in order to prevent hail damage.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The great thing about 'free' solar and wind energy is how much it costs and how much more it costs to make it reliable.

I've never heard of nuclear power plants needing batteries, massive grid interconnectors, mechanisms to protect against hail, backup power stations for when the sun don't shine, or, indeed, replacing every 15 years...with the waste disposal at the public's expense...

You cant make a silk purse out of a sow's ear...

[Fredxx]

I seemed to have replied on the wrong thread, not sure what happened there. I was trying to say that the registration number of the Landrover in the Luton car park fire was read using various super-resolution techniques from multiple images.

[Fredxx]

One wonders if a cost benefit analysis was made on the probability that one or more panels would be damaged by hail? If it only occurs every 3 or more years then I doubt protection is warranted.

[alan_m]

And how reliable is the prediction of hail?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not bad if you have weather radar Just add it to the cost of the solar farm, along with the servos to tilt the panels...

[Pamela]

Nevertheless Texan hailstones are big enough to leave dents in cars, as this news story describes.

[Chris Green]

Er, but, predicting hail accurately in the next few hours isn't going to help. You'd need to predict it at least months in advance to enable you to do something to protect the solar panels.

[Fredxx]

Radar helps predict hail in the next 3 years? That's a new one.

[Rod Speed]

There is a reason that very few have any of that.

[Rod Speed]

The problem is that that is MUCH more expensive than the fixed panel approach which is why hardly anyone does it like that.

[Rod Speed]

The records of hail big enough to damage solar panels is excellent.