Pictures: Look What a Few Punishing Minutes of Baseball-Sized Hail Did to Massive Nebraska Solar Farm
Renewable energy is the alternative that Democrats and other environmental nuts want to replace reliable oil, gas and coal.
But time and time again, people who rely on wind and solar power have had to learn the tough lesson that such alternatives are both undependable and susceptible to the same elements they are supposed to harness.
Nowhere was that more true than in Nebraska, where a thunderstorm dumped baseball-sized hail on a solar farm on Friday at a speed of 150 mph — destroying the facility in just a few minutes.
Cowboy State Daily reported a storm moved east out of Wyoming where it wreaked havoc just across the state line on a solar farm in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.
The facility previously touted its benefits for the area on its website.
“Scottsbluff, Nebraska’s 5.2 MW Community Solar project is a part of NPPD’s Sunwise program,” the facility states. “The solar array has over 14,000 solar panels, which are installed on trackers that will follow the sun throughout the day.”
It doesn’t look like the panels will be tracking anything for the foreseeable future. The facility appears to be a total loss:
Solar panels destroyed by large hail north of Scottsbluff, Nebraska last night. #newx Photo Courtesy Matt Larsen #hail pic.twitter.com/2ND7BHmYlB
— Daryl Orr (@WxWyDaryl) June 27, 2023
Just in case you wondered if hail could damage solar panels. Here are the results of a hail storm on Friday, June 23, 2023 in Scottsbluff County, Nebraska.
Wonder how long that will take to get repaired? pic.twitter.com/m0FJOXyex8
— Victoria Wesseler (@VicWesseler) June 25, 2023
Scottsbluff City Manager Kevin Spencer told Cowboy State Daily, “Just by looking at it, it looks destroyed to me.”
Writing for the outlet, Kevin Killough reported, “The hail shattered most of the panels on the 5.2-megawatt solar project, sparing an odd panel like missing teeth in a white smile.”
He added, “The Federal Emergency Management Agency ranks this area in its highest category for hail risk on the national index.”
Given that information, it is confusing as to why the Scottsbluff facility was ever constructed in the first place.
Of course, government-encouraged green energy projects with today’s lack of reliable technology often deny logic while they also decimate wildlife.
The region of the country in question is not a proper place for a solar farm by any objective metric, and yet there are plans to build another one of these eyesores.
Killough reported, “Wyoming has only one commercial-scale solar farm, but a second project is under construction south of Cheyenne.”
Brilliant!
Just for some context regarding how green energy has failed those who have relied on it in recent years, let’s revisit some visual examples of similar failures that never got the attention they deserved:
A wind turbine near Crowell, Texas, caught fire after being struck by lightning during a storm — creating large rings of smoke. pic.twitter.com/XbJeH8VHoE
— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 23, 2022
Wind turbine on fire makes for nifty smoke rings🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/8p7Gpgz4ma
— Nicole Sjamaan🪶 (@SjamaanN) February 20, 2022
Wind turbine near Muirkirk (east Chatham-Kent) on fire. #windturbine pic.twitter.com/dW4DIPMdtW
— Albert Tenuta (@AlbertTenuta) June 15, 2023
None of these images mention one tragic fact: Texas’ power grid, which relies on wind and solar power for a substantial amount of juice, failed during a winter storm in February 2021.
Hundreds of people died statewide in a situation that could have been avoided.
BREAKING: Nearly half of Texas’ wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines in West Texas, grid operators report 1/ https://t.co/Qfi25KN37n
— Austin Statesman (@statesman) February 14, 2021
Solar and wind power make sense in some circumstances and in some regions. Massive solar farms in Arizona and Nevada generally are not imperiled by severe storms seen in the Midwest and the Southeast.
Their use can help alleviate strains on the grids.
Wind farms on the west coast also are not subjected to the kind of weather in places such as Florida.
But green energy alone is not the answer to powering a country of more than 330 million people — and their use in places where the outcome is predictable destruction is evidence of how little thought advocates for these projects put into them.
Until the green crusaders offer the public a genuinely reliable alternative to time-tested oil and gas, Americans must demand logic over political advocacy.
If you aren’t convinced, I have a new junkyard in western Nebraska I’d like to sell you.
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