People Evacuated From Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Center After Solar Panels Catch Fire
Life safety and environmental hazards are now being discovered through the actual use of green energy sources, which have essentially been ignored by green energy advocates. The bill for ignoring reasonable concerns based on real science is now coming due.
Last fall, the UK Independent reported that the number of fires involving solar panels soared after a boom in their use driven by energy bill increases.
Data obtained under freedom of information rules show that there were six times the number of fires involving solar panels last year compared with 10 years ago.
The rate has increased sharply with 66 fires already recorded up until July this year compared with 63 for the whole of 2019, prompting concern from safety experts who are worried about a lack of regulation on who can install them.
Proponents of green energy have minimized and downplayed the concerns about relying so heavily on new technologies that are not fully developed with hazards that have not completely been assessed or addressed.
As of yesterday, these worries can no longer be ignored. In Australia, the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Center held a massive swim meet for high schools, and the venue was packed with teens and their families.
The center had to be evacuated as the solar panels on the roof caught on fire.
NSW Fire and Rescue spokesperson Guy Lightfoot told Lismore City News that crews arriving on the scene found fire and “black smoke issuing from the roof of the aquatic centre”.
“Crews got to work on the roof with the hose line and breathing apparatus, we also deployed an aerial appliance,” he said.
“On the roof they found solar panels alight, which they then switched off. The damage was confined to some roof panels and solar panels.” (Lismore City News)
The Centre’s ‘X’ account revealed, “The Aquatic Centre will be closed for the remainder of the afternoon due to an unforeseen issue with a solar panel on the roof causing a fire evacuation. We thank all of our patrons and staff for their patience and cooperation during this time.”
The Aquatic Centre will be closed for the remainder of the afternoon due to an unforeseen issue with a solar panel on the roof causing a fire evacuation. We thank all of our patrons and staff for their patience and cooperation during this time.
— Sydney Olympic Park (@sydolympicpark) May 13, 2024
Although only one person was injured in the incident, a fire in a filled arena could be a massive tragedy.
However, solar panels aren’t the only green technology with significant environmental or safety issues. Last fall, Beege Welborne of Hot Air reported that a Texas Monthly-featured town had essentially become a graveyard for discarded wind turbine blades.
Hard to believe @TexasMonthly would even publish this. What’s next – @ProPublica affilated @TexasTribune doing a story on it?
Thousands of Old Wind Turbine Blades Pile Up in West Texas https://t.co/fTvc8gphB9
— David Blackmon’s Energy Absurdity (@EnergyAbsurdity) August 24, 2023
Nine months later, the publication reports that despite complaints to the local environmental authorities, the blades are still there….despite promises otherwise.
It opened in 2017 and has become a long-term home for thousands of discarded wind turbine blades. Each has been cut into thirds that remain as long as modest ranch houses. They are not buried in the earth but stacked haphazardly in rows of undulating off-white fiberglass.
This blade boneyard was built by Global Fiberglass Solutions, a Washington State company that promised the State of Texas, the county, the city, investors, wind-energy companies, and its Sweetwater neighbors that its business plan was to temporarily store the blades there before grinding them up and recycling them into pallets or railroad ties. That never happened, but after I first visited the site, last August, the company’s CEO, Don Lilly, promised: “If you come back nine months from now, you will not see the material.”
I returned last week to find nothing of the sort. Sweetwater officials have tired of the years of unkept promises and little help from state authorities to address the situation. The blades remain as they were, and nearly every local I spoke with said they hadn’t seen any recent activity in the yard.
The funny thing is that when you research wind turbine blade recycling, you find that it is “tricky”, energy-intensive, and produces oil-based by products.
The company shreds each turbine blade and runs the pieces through an oxygen-free reactor to separate the polymer from the glass fibers….hardly the “green energy” utopia promised.
Those fibers can then be recovered and reused.
Morgan: “We take that material, recover it, and have the capability to put it into a brand-new blade.”
The process also recovers oil and a gas that can be used for energy.
Finally, to round out my review of the life safety and environmental hazards that are now being discovered through the actual use of green energy sources, President Donald Trump has vowed to immediately halt offshore wind energy projects “on day one” of a new term as US president to protect the whales.
“We are going to make sure that that ends on day one,” Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for November’s presidential election, said of the offshore wind farms. “I’m going to write it out in an executive order. It’s going to end on day one.”
…“They destroy everything, they’re horrible, the most expensive energy there is,” Trump said of the wind turbines. “They ruin the environment, they kill the birds, they kill the whales.”
Trump claims Biden’s wind farms are killing whales in numbers like we’ve never before seen.
TRUMP: “[Windmills] are driving the whales, I think, a little batty. And they’re washing up on shores at levels never seen before.” pic.twitter.com/0ZPlauBaBs
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 26, 2023
It appears the bill for ignoring reasonable concerns about the massive expansion of solar and wind energy that critics, based on real science and technological experience, have expressed is now coming due.
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Comments
Just play Bob Seger’s The Fire Down Below and call it a concert with pyrotechnics.
Rename the place to “Montreux.” Problem solved.
Burning cars, burning solar panels, slave children mining rare earths, domination by the Chicoms, open pit mines, limited lifespans, unregulated disposal issues, strain on the power grid, inadequate and intermittent power….
What’s not to like about “green” energy?
Why doesn’t “green” power produce green light when I use it to light a room?
Maybe they’ll invent circuit breakers soon. It’s an electricity thing.
Most of these solar panels fires happen on the panels themselves, independent from the electrical connection to the hosting structure. They even have a term for it: Panel hot spots. If the hot spot is large enough, the panels themselves can catch fire and/or ignite the roofing material.
There is a solar phrase that is becoming increasingly well-known called Solar Burn.
Solar Burn is when your solar panels continue to make electricity, but the equipment that
steps up the power so it can be sent to the Grid fails. In most cases the rooftop equipment is only 5 or 6 years old. But, the company that sold and installed the panels is out of business and homeowners have no idea who to get to fix their system.
Meanwhile, they continue to pay for the panels but do not get any income by selling power to the Grid.
Selling power to the grid is generally a raw deal. It is better to store excess power in a large battery, followed by storing it as ice for cooling or as heat.
A battery pack large enough to carry you through one cloudy day and the nights before and after is _very_ expensive – and batteries have a limited lifespan. Solar plus battery backup only makes economic sense when it’s impractical to connect to the grid – and every family that I know that does this cuts their electricity usage well below the norm, so they can get along with an undersized system.
If you want to supply all the power needed by the typical American family to an off-grid residence, a diesel generator will cost much less to buy and install. It does require fuel and maintenance, but I doubt that in the long run, it costs more to keep a diesel generator running than replacing a huge battery bank every 3 to 5 years, cleaning the solar panels at least once a year, and replacing them after hail storms or when their output fades with age.
The cost of diesel generators does not scale down with smaller size very well, so in smaller remote power applications solar + battery is often the lowest cost solution, but it never gives you a low cost per KWh; it’s just that when the KW becomes low enough, the fixed costs dominate, and solar does scale down in fixed costs with lower power.
It was an old solar grid, so, someone stuck a penny in the fuse box.
“It appears the bill for ignoring reasonable concerns about the massive expansion of solar and wind energy that critics, based on real science and technological experience, have expressed is now coming due.”
You haven’t demonstrated the science though have you.
1. With respect to solar panels catching fire. This is an issue with standards of electrical installation. That’s a criticism of standards not the panels
2. Turbine blades. Wind turbines have been shown to have a lower carbon cost than fossil fuels. The fact that baldes can then be recycled just makes them better not worse.
3.offshore energy. It’s fascinating that you cite an article that points out Teumps claim of off shore energy killing whales is scientifically unjustified.
4. Still waiting for that mechanisms explaining the temperature curve 🙄
Ffs should have been a general comment soz lol
This is an issue with standards of electrical installation.
You might want to look at TargaGTS’ comment.
The fact that baldes can then be recycled just makes them better not worse.
Except, evidently, they can’t.
Still waiting for that mechanisms explaining the temperature curve
It’s called falsified and bogus data, along with manipulation of the representation.
FFS!!! To use your term.
Did you read the article attached that talks about a Washington Company taking a shit on Sweetwater TX with these turbine blades?
Why are you such an obtuse asshat?
The turbine blades aren’t being recycled as of yet. They are storing them in wind turbine dumping ground in Sweetwater, TX, because they don’t know what to do with them. The offshore use confuses marine life and damages marine habitat. The marine life doesn’t “adapt”. It leaves the area or dies off. They also chop of birds trying to migrate through the airspace. Surprised they haven’t been banned yet, considering how little electricity they provide.
“Morgan: “We take that material, recover it, and have the capability to put it into a brand-new blade.”
These guys have got “doubling down on stupid” down to a (climate) science.
Adding to Smooths comment – One of the pro-wind power claims is that land under the wind turbine can still be used from farming and ranching. Therefore the actual land use is minimal.
However, the cattle on windfarms huddle up wind from the turbines, not downwind because of the noise. Thus a significant reduction in productivity on the ranch land.
The fire was caused by global warming. All fires are caused by global warming, or so I have been told by “scientists”.
Just think of the fire as free extra energy, over and above the contract commitment.
six times the number of fires involving solar panels last year compared with 10 years ago
Oh, please. You bunch of whiners. That’s not even a 100% increase per year! After all, you have to cook those broken eggs you people are always on about to get the omelet! Wusses!
Large scale solar installations are money losers, and become taxpayer boondoggle. While roof-top solar panels for homes are flawed idea, and difficult to protect from hail event, major dump of snow etc. Biden green new deal is trillion dollar fraud, and won’t lower temps 1 degree.
“A fire….at Sea Parks”
(It’s an “IT Crowd” reference)
How? It is surrounded by water.
My son installed residential solar for a time. He said this is an issue along with the concern of attic fires underneath rooftop installations.
Adding to rebel girl comment – Also issue with increase of water leaks in the roof.
the dems moved to impeach trump
greta should have been thrown into the pit as a sacrifice
The gods didn’t want her. Too much competition for who is more evil.
People should reroof before installing solar panels, so install a metal roof. When installing a metal roof, do so with strips of fiber cement on the trusses.
Better is to ground mount, as I have done. It is much easier to service, both electrically and washing them to remove dust, which lowers efficiency.
Also, panels are already being designed to eliminate hot spots, which cause panel failure but do not start fires. Fires are probably from poor wiring and circuit protection.
“Better is to ground mount, as I have done.”
Most solar cheerleaders live on postage stamps. It’s the roof or nothing.
Me: laughs in Australian.
Why doesn’t the city council rezone the area and start fining the company storing the blades there?
If we could just figure out how to harness all the energy released in EV and solar panel fires, think of the savings in energy costs! And maybe they are hot enough to burn discarded wind turbine blades, which would be a real plus!
Note how bureaucrats have decided that the problem is not the concept of or build quality of solar panels, but controlling who installs them. Get ready for another FFL/TSA type licensing boondoggle, probably with some vaccine-type lawsuit immunity thrown in just to put cleats on the jackboot.