Massive Solar Farm in Florida Appears Heavily Damaged by Hurricane Milton
A review of other solar farm storm damage over the past year reveals a 6-month time to bring the installation online and little details on costs associated with those repairs.
Renewable resources supply about 7% of Florida’s total in-state electricity net generation; about three-fourths of that renewable generation comes from solar energy.
In 2022, Florida was third in the nation, after California and Texas, in total solar power generating capacity, and solar energy accounted for more than 5% of Florida’s total net generation. About four-fifths of the state’s solar generation came from utility-scale (1 megawatt or larger) facilities.
As we assess the current state of reality as it relates to renewable energy, it might be a good time to evaluate how the solar farms that Hurricane Milton and its many tornadoes impacted.
Duke Energy News reports that its Lake Placid Solar Farm took a significant hit from the storm.
The Lake Placid Solar Power Plant is located in Highlands County, Fla., and suffered damage during Hurricane Milton. The facility opened in December 2019 and is 45 megawatts, which is enough to power more than 12,000 homes at peak production.
The Duke Energy page on its damaged Florida solar farm. https://t.co/AhAAzpyrlC pic.twitter.com/nKZJIZYDbU
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) October 13, 2024
What Hurricane Milton did to a Duke Energy solar farm in Florida. https://t.co/3JJuQPHo2d pic.twitter.com/w2QV5WA9l7
— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) October 13, 2024
At the present time, there is no official report on the extent of the damage, a timeline for repairs, or potential effects on the communities this solar farm serves.
However, as green energy activists continue to press for major solar farms and offshore wind projects (which have a significant impact on the local environments in which they are constructed), it would behoove everyone to keep an eye on the realities related to the repair of this particular facility.
Let’s take a look at how other solar farms did in other major storms. To begin with, in March of this year, a severe Texan hail storm damaged thousands of solar panels at a Fort Bend County farm in Texas.
The freak and severe hail storm hit the farm and its environs on March 16, causing massive property damage throughout the affected area, the outlet reported.
“The hailstorm we experienced Saturday morning was unimaginable,” Nick Kaminski, a Ford Bend County resident, told the outlet. “We’ve never seen anything like it in our lifetime.” Kaminski’s own house suffered damage from the wind, causing the roof to come off, which was followed by hail, ABC 13 reported.
BREAKING: Hail storm in Damon texas on 3/24/24 destroys 1,000’s of acres of solar farms.
Who pays to fix this green energy? @StateFarm? @FarmBureau? @Allstate?
Or you the taxpayer? pic.twitter.com/GpNSaopObZ
— Corey Thompson (@Roughneck2real) March 25, 2024
In May of this year, a storm severely damaged a new Indian “floating solar” project, which was offline only a few days after it began operations. I will simply note that the report also describes that local people were very unhappy with the project’s arrival in the first place.
What has been described as the world’s largest floating solar plant at Omkareshwar Dam was badly damaged when a storm hit in mid-April.
Narmada Hydroelectric Development Corporation said the plant will be back in operation soon, but no firm date was announced, according to the Times of India.
The damaged floating plant is one of three developed near the dam. The storm that damaged it had winds reported at 50 kph, which is just over 31 mph.
Those winds are actually relatively tame. According to the National Weather Service%20causing%20major%20damage.), “extreme” wind threats feature winds approximately ranging from 74 mph to 95 mph. In fact, the NWS actually doesn’t consider winds under 39 mph to be of much threat, at all.
#Nature & #Narmad #River ‘s fury disrupts one of the largest floating solar panel plant on Omkareshwar #Dam reservoir which was being opposed by Fisher people for causing disruption to their fishing rights.
📍 MP, India:
The world's largest floating solar farm is suffered significant damage due bad weatherThe solar plant, which was built on the backwaters of the Omkareshwar Dam, was hit by a strong storm on April 9, 2024
— ⚡️🧘♂️ (@BlwBisht) May 18, 2024
To round out this report, an entire Nebraska solar complex was damaged by hail in 2023.
The so-called Community Solar Project – a 4.4 megawatt solar field comprised of 14,000 solar panels and located in Scottsbluff, Nebraska – is not currently operating and will remain offline until repairs are completed, the Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) confirmed to Fox News Digital. NPPD, the state-owned public utility, and energy firm GenPro Energy Solutions developed the project in 2020.
“The solar complex was destroyed by hail,” Scottsbluff City Manager Kevin Spencer said in an interview. “They’re assessing the damage, but it certainly looks destroyed to me.”
Energy security? How quickly we forget. . .
A little over a year ago a severe hailstorm (June 2023) caused grave damage to a solar farm in Nebraska. The storm destroyed most of the 14,000 solar panels at the 5.2-megawatt facility. This incident highlights the vulnerability of… pic.twitter.com/QGCvC6cLzX— Ron Messick (@ron_messick) August 9, 2024
The Nebraska facility went back online in January of this year….about 6 months later. I will simply note that no cost for those repairs was provided in any report I could locate in my research.
The frequency of major storms and the costs associated with repair from them must be an essential part of any calculation when deciding if a new power facility is right for the region. It appears that green energy activists aren’t providing this data, but rather their visions of would should be based on their beliefs.
Theology is no way to power a civilization.
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Comments
Hail storms are extremely common in the SE United States especially in Texas Oklahoma, AL, MS, Fl GA.
Solar panels have 20 year life span with no storms, yet storms cuts the real life span down to a 12-15 year range. A brick building housing a gas generator has a life span of 40-60 years.
Homeowners insurance is expensive with the primary claims due to roof damage in hail storms. Roofs are made with medium to heavy duty materials to reduce damage. Solar panels are covered with glass.
All they have to do is put a good sturdy metal roof over the top of the solar panels and they should be fine.
Have you seen any hailstorms in places like OK and TX? Half the time they blow in sideways.
You’re gonna need walls, too.
Subterranean Solar Cells.
We even get hail once or twice a year in desert Arizona!
Commercial solar/wind projects can’t make the cut under even minimal scrutiny. The primary purpose of any form of power plant is to produce power. Period. They can’t overcome the intermittent nature of the project; the doesn’t shine at night and the wind doesn’t always blow. Solar activity is lessened in the fall/winter compared to spring/summer.
Once we force the grifters pushing these projects to sign contracts to deliver reliable amounts power this will become apparent. IMO forcing these grifters to build on site NG or other reliable backup power generation capacity to supply the amount of power delivered in the contract then they become untenable. End the subsidies and it becomes even more of a boondoggle.
IMO point of use solar and wind for a commercial or residential use by that business or home may have some merit. They can lower their overall electricity costs and with an additional investment in batteries can have some back up power. We shouldn’t criticize this who want to invest their own funds into solar and wind for point of use. The same doesn’t apply to commercial grid projects.
My son is a commercial electrician who works on residential and commercial solar installations. He says he would never have it.
They install the panels on roofs where no one takes into account the problems involved with reaching the source of a potential attic fire.
That said, they’re probably a great idea for swimming pool heaters or outbuildings.
Agreed. Rooftop solar seems like a bad idea anywhere hail or high winds can occur. In one bad event you may get significant damage. A ground mounted system where you could put the panels into a vertical configuration might help if you could turn them so that they didn’t take the wind.
For outbuildings, a pool, an aerator on a pond, to get some electricity in a remote area not served by the grid or just as a limited backup then solar makes way more sense IMO. So long as folks spend their own money w/o taxpayer/ratepayers subsidies they should go ahead.
Swimming pool heaters are “solar hot water” devices, not “photoelectric” devices. They’re rubber, not glass. My solar hot water device for the home is glass, but is really tough glass, not namby-pamby solar cell glass. Both these technologies are robust, have minimal footprints, and are time-tested. I swear by them. But I wouldn’t invest in photoelectric technology if you paid me. I’ll run a security camera or something small with a local book-sized photocell, but nothing bigger.
Most of my electricity cost is distribution (2/3), not energy (1/3), for which solar won’t help. On the plus side, their tree trimming program is spectacular and outages are very very rare compared to 50 years ago.
Correct – the capacity factor for solar during summer is around 35%
The capacity factor in the winter is around 6%
The texas freeze fiasco of Feb 2021,
Solar was producing around 12% capacity factor across the entire nation and a DROP of 60% – 70% wind production across the entire NORTH AMERICAN Continent for 7 DAYS
Tornadoes will seek out solar farms instead of trailer parks for large flat high-lifting surfaces to move around.
Power is still available after solar panels turn into a debris field. But when fossil fuels are unavailable then everybody huddles by candlelight.
I have applied for a patent for retractable umbrellas for solar panels. Soon I will be a billionaire.
EXXXX-ell-ent!
Gee, who could have possibly foreseen this?
Don’t worry about all of this damage, the US government will pay for all of it to be replaced with Chinese panels.
its going to take a lot of fossil fuels to clean that up
Quit being hysterical, you racists.
Just like Martha Raddatz described the apartment complexes in Aurora CO taken over by Venezuelan gangs, its “only a handful” of solar farms being destroyed by predictable weather events.
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Leslie, Thanks for this report! I can’t understand why I had not heard of these incidents from the MSM.
Could we get the Global Warming cult to comment on how these make sense, given their view that ever more and more serious storms are in our future? I can imagine a power source contained in a strong, compact, concrete building. Maybe Elon Musk could invent something like that some day?
It seems there are other benefits besides earthquake resistance to building nuclear power plants to such standards.
Hurricane? Tornado? Pffft!
Looking at this, it doesn’t seem very cost-effective or reliable.
Sure the damage and the cost matters but the bigger problem is that those destroyed panels are now leaching toxic chemicals into the soil. The field won’t even be usable for plant growth or animal grazing when they are done with the green scam.