(RightWing.org) – Nebraska residents have just discovered an unexpected drawback to President Biden’s green energy plans. A huge solar power plant found itself in the path of a hailstorm last month and came out looking a bit worse for wear. Now less green, but more durable systems are taking up the slack.
Nebraska solar farm crippled by hail, underscoring power source's fragility https://t.co/nvX0cxxQis
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) June 29, 2023
Solar power is a key part of President Biden’s renewable energy plans. He’s investing billions of dollars of borrowed money in green power, and fields full of solar panels are becoming a common sight across the US. It turns out that relying on large areas of glass panels to generate electricity isn’t always a great idea.
In 2020 NPPD, Nebraska’s state-owned energy company, opened a new multi-megawatt solar power facility outside the town of Scottsbluff. Its centerpiece was an array of over 14,000 solar panels, capable of generating up to 5.2 megawatts of electricity. Unfortunately, on June 23, a thunderstorm swept over Scottsbluff — and it brought tornadoes and freak hailstorms with it. The solar plant was battered by 150 mph gusts, which hurled baseball-sized hailstones against the fragile panels. The solar system had high-end weather-resistant panels, but they weren’t sturdy enough to survive what the storm threw at them. Regional Emergency Management Director Tim Newman says the plant suffered up to a million dollars of damage and is offline until it can be repaired.
There haven’t been any reports of blackouts caused by the damage, and NPPD sources say the solar facility is a “relatively small” part of their generating capacity. However, until the panels are repaired, and so far, there’s no estimate on how long that will take, residents will be relying on other sources of power.
An NPPD spokesman said the state’s largest power facility is a 1,365-megawatt coal plant, backed up by the 800-megawatt Cooper Nuclear Station. The coal plant emits carbon dioxide, and greens hate nuclear power for some reason, but there’s something to be said for generators that don’t break the first time a storm passes over.
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