California to Experience the Dark Side of Solar Power

chemgator · Aug 7, 2023

RealGatorFan said: ↑

Have to see how this plays out on a larger scale since their proof-of-concept used a common household microwave. I'm guessing there are commercial microwaves large enough to put an entire panel in it. Will keep an eye on this. Thanks!

However, we may need to ask why placing these farms everywhere is a smart idea. The issue with solar panels are that they are fragile. That hailstorm in Nebraska in June was evidence against solar panels, in this case the destruction of 14,000 panels. It's the primary reason why I won't get them, too many times we have hail and I want to replace the standard roof shingles with a metal roof. Solar panels in areas with little to no environmental impacts are the best places to drop a farm, like a desert. But nothing in the American heartland will work because of the frequency of storms. Florida is another state that shouldn't have any due to one hurricane's impact on 10s of thousands of panels. The panels in the Nebraska disaster were sent to a landfill.

Hail Storm Destroys Solar Farm in Nebraska

This is an excellent article from the Institute For Energy Research that describes the Nebraska storm and fallout and how that entire area is building massive solar farms. Forget 25 years, we are talking about just a few years before these farms will need to be replaced. That specific solar farm in Nebraska had 14,000 panels. The US in the area elaborated in the article is one of the worst areas for hailstorms in the world and frequently has hail the size of baseballs. The article also discusses how pointless it is right now to recycle these panels. Maybe in 25 years we will have a better program but I'm skeptical because of the current recycling program the world has now in place for the last 40 years. We recycle just 5% of all plastic material. We can't recycle even a leftover plastic cup because it has to be completely devoid of all materials including labeling. Overall, just 35% of stuff in your recycle bin actually gets recycled - the remaining 65% is either buried in a landfill or burned.

The idea to use microwave ovens may work on a small scale, but how about 2.5 Billion of them? We have 25 years or less to figure out a way to recycle them.
Click to expand...

I wonder if you could pull a series of large tarps over a solar farm in time to protect them from hail, and what size hail the tarps would protect them from.

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California to Experience the Dark Side of Solar Power

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