By P Gosselin‘
Multimillion dollar solar project gets reduced to a heap of toxic rubble by one single hail storm.
The Scottsbluff, Nebraska 5.2 MW Community Solar project was part of the NPPD’s Sunwise program that consisted of an array has over 14,000 solar panels. It’s reported that it had been put into operation in 2019.
Surely the project had been ceremoniously put into operation, with dignitaries and proponents proclaiming it would reliably deliver cheap and clean energy, reduce the state’s carbon footprint and contribute to a bright and climate-friendly future.
Now it has been just recently reported that the multimillion dollar solar energy park was literally reduced to a heap of rubble as hail literally pummeled it to a pulp in just a matter of minutes days ago.
The disaster underscores once again just how vulnerable to the forces of nature solar energy parks are. The system’s 25-year expected lifetime was cut to down to less than 4 years, and makes you wonder if setting up such weather-vulnerable plants make any sense at all.
Dreams vs reality
“This project will help the city achieve its goal to reduce our carbon footprint and stabilize city costs for the next 25 years,” said Nathan D. Johnson, City Manager, City of Scottsbluff. “Through projects like this, we hope to offer an affordable ‘green’ option to our residents, both residential and commercial, to reap the benefits as well.”
That was the dream. A couple of days ago we witnessed the reality.
Now residents will surely have to rely on good old, reliable fossil fuel power to keep the electricity flowing.
And how long will it take to clean up the toxic mess left behind?
Dont cry Its not as if anything o value has been destroyed. As far as the owners are concerned they have already reaped their tax breaks and subsidies. They can now take their insurance. And find a new scam to invest in Joe Brandon will sow them how
They might get extra payments for each panel that tests positive for covid.
Not so fast . . . can’t the owners just rebuild the same solar farm (once they remove the remains of the previous one), and once again collect tax breaks and subsidies for doing so?
After all the virtue signaling—and the dream—MUST continue.
But alastair its like building a Bonfire out of 100 bills forceable extracted from the Taxpayer. The Private sector variety of taxpayer no less, since the government worker has built in COLAs to cover the tax drain on their disposable income. The private sector taxpaying worker has to make do with less to subsidize these Corporate boondoggles.
will the State insurance regulators let the insurance company bump rates for everyone to cover this, or do only the relatively risky categories get bumped?
every one pays?
“Solar panels destroyed by large hail north of Scottsbluff, Nebraska last night.”
Was it insured?
Is it a multimillion write-off?
Is it insurance fraud? Was there one manager running around with a ball-peen hammer to get a massive payout? sarc (but only just).
Hey, they think they can control the climate… so why not ! 😉
Well it was built in an area prone to hail storms – pity the poor fool agent who arranged their insurance – and probably gave them some kind of green enviro discount too.
If it was insured, it will be very vulnerable to the claims management practice of said insurer/s’; it may also depend if there was a “storm” in the vicinity – “storm” for insurance purposes is a defined term with specific defined parameters.
Just because it hailed does not necessarily mean it was a “storm”….
Then there’s the Act of God clause……
And if they do get an insurance pay out, what company would be daft enough to insure the replacement?
Might make it harder to get insurance in the future as well. State Farm and Allstate are not underwriting any new policies in California
Well, there was someone “daft” enough in the first place.
For the right price, you will always be able to find someone daft enough.
You will be able to find someone who is willing to insure them, however the premiums are going to be through the roof.
In my experience the AoG clause can be an issue but there are plenty of additional “small print” clauses by which Insurance Companies can wriggle out of paying…
There’s a possibility that the project was self-insured by the City of Scottsbluff.
“Self insured” means uninsured.
Usually financed through a bond issue.
… means covered by sales tax & property owners; & property taxes were already in the political cross-hairs for increase.
The “experts” need to find a way to cover the panels.
They will need more subsidies to design, build and install massive retractable roofing mechanisms that “in an instant” cover the panels from humungous hailstorms, that are a result of climate change.
Steve
The “experts” need to find a way to cover-up the panels.
Supply a decent glass roof to protect the panels perhaps?
Oh wait, that will need protection too.
We are clearly getting into Turtles-all-the-way-down territory.
They should use Al-O-N (transparent Aluminum) It costs the army $10-15 per square inch for armored vehicles so it must cost pennies to produce
An easy system would be to kip them vertically with a solenoid latch which could be activated in a emergency. One would then have to manually kip them back.
Hailstones do not always fall exactly vertically and they bounce. They will damage any exposed surface or part. The panels will get hammered whichever way up they are.
Over my lifetime, I’ve owned four houses and each was damaged by hail. Three of the homes were in Colorado and one in Texas.
One house had a cedar shake roof and vinyl siding. There were splinters everywhere but interestingly only the north face of the vinyl siding was damaged.
These solar panels seem to show a strength threshold that once exceeded the panel is weakened, so that its total destruction occurs. I imagine that vertical edge hits would do the same.
Here’s what they can do to a car
I had hail damage to a car, not as bad as that above, and it took 3 weeks and over $9K to repair. It was relatively new, otherwise they would have totaled it.
Man o’ man, that a lotta Bondo.
IIRC, they use a suction-type device to pop them out if there is no other damage than the dimples.
Only works if the average radius-of-curvature of the dent is above a critical size. After all, vacuum-to-atmospheric delta-P only gives you 15 psid to work with.
Looking at the apparent depth-to-diameter of the hailstorm dents in the photo tells me they would need hammering out to restore flatness . . . way more expensive and time-consuming than just sanding and applying Bondo. Repainting required in either case.
Hail storms can be very severe.
Decades ago , one hit our area . Neighbor kept one ( for show and tell ) in her freezer for years . It was a single stone , not a bunch frozen together . It weighed 4 pounds .
The ground was covered with the hail , looked like a snowstorm .
Solar panels did not exist then , but if they did , they would have been totally destroyed .
in the late 1970s, my brother and me bought a first car – an olive green Pinto that had gone through a hailstorm, looked a lot like that truck: a pea green golf ball. of course we bought it cuz we were young and had little money, the car was cheaper since it had two strikes against it, but ran well until we could afford better
That is exactly what happened to my location, and my location only, last year in the UK.
Try living on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.
I imagine that vertical edge hits would do the same.
If the hits are hard enough to bend the edge of the panel, then that could send shock waves through the panel that are strong enough to cause cracks. Even if it doesn’t crack the glass, they could loosen the internal electrical connections.
If the panels are vertical, then the underside of the panel, where the electronics and external electrical connections are, is exposed to the hail.
They were on motorised trackers, so surely they could have been turned as far vertical as possible.
And when the thunderstorm blows through the vertical panels will be subject to greater wind loads than horizontal panels. Surely with a good bit of study and a few decades of experience, some sense of the optimum design parameters for each location may be established. For instance, in Florida will it be best to go horizontal during hot months to minimize wind gusts, or vertical to avoid hail or even thermal shock when ice-cold raindrops land on very hot solar panels. All it takes is money. Lots of taxpayer money. (I’m old enough to remember when the beautiful metallic paint on every southern-based Mercedes failed from big ole raindrops falling on super-heated thick layers of paint and primer)
The trackers would be on auto – trying hard to find the Sun through the cloud of hailstones falling – damage probably happened fast, swept across the panels in a few minutes, with probably no one around.
Building the panels so that they could pivot would add a lot to their cost.
If they move too fast, the stop when the panels hit vertical could also crack panels.
“The “experts” need to find a way to cover the panels.”
Surround them with a force field.
Beam me up Scotty….
In Mendoza Province, Argentina, some fincas cover their grapes with tented strong mesh, as a protection against the frequent hailstorms. This leads to a reduction of an average of 11% in solar energy getting through. Hard to imagine a solar plant dealing with a 11% reduction, so forgetaboutit.
How about adding Gorilla Glass covers?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla_Glass
Probably raises the cost a lot, but money is no concern when spending other people’s money to Save The Planet.
I support, but only if the Gorillas are ethically harvested.
Actually, solar panels are supposed to be hail resistant and pass a test were 2.5 inch diameter ice balls are fired at them from a pneumatic cannon at terminal velocity – 10 times in specified locations. It takes a properly tempered glass to pass this test. Just looking at the damage pattern variations in the photo of the Scottsbluff installation I’d suspect a major quality issue. Many show damage consistent with poorly performed tempering. Suspect that this will result in some warrantee claims and law suits. If the panels are from China, good luck with getting any satisfaction.
How much power a retractable cover use? May be they could be tilted away from the wind direction. In the Tweet article, they said a demonstration was done by one solar company using a baseball thrower. I guess they weren’t built to take a 150 mph fastball with a 2lb ball.
Whatever they build also cannot cast any shadows on the panels when the protection is not deployed.
Hailstorm destroys solar park. More evidence, surely, that there is a climate emergency.
Worse than we thought.
And may already be too late…
Talk about a feedback loop.
I’m sure that sooner or later—maybe it’s happened already?—the news will report on a large solar farm that was destroyed by a tornado somewhere.
Maybe that will be the subject of a similar WUWT article . . . and commenters can then talk about means to protect solar panels from “wind”.
No, its trailer parks that cause tornadoes. Its solar parks that cause hailstorms.
You’re being too harsh. They can still be used as shade for small animals and insects.
You’re forgetting insectageddon….
So long as the poor things are ok with lungs full of glass particles !
If the glass shards don’t do them in, they still have to survive the now leaching toxic metals.
There will now be a ‘study’ to see if new, toxic-metal-resistant species develop… but more incidents like this will have to occur over time… oh, wait…
Was the installation insured ?
If yes, the premium is going to increase massively, and the $/kwh as well.
If no, that’s really tough luck …
And if not insured, who is going to pay the recycling bill?
Lucky Nebraskans?
Deplorables
Recycling? Burying them in the ground you mean.
Well as we all know, the grazing animals that enjoy the grass grown below the panels have not been harmed by this hail storm event. They will still be able to carry on grazing under the broken panels as they normally do. We are told here in the UK that a great plus of placing solar panels in meadows, is it still allows grazing below them…..apparently.
So now all lost eh 🙂
How high off the ground would the panels have to be (plus all the electronics and electrical connections) in order that the cattle wouldn’t hit their heads while walking under them.
I suspect the taller poles, and the bracing needed for those taller poles is going to add a noticeable amount to the construction costs. Maintenance costs as well, since the workers will need to carry ladders with them.
More …
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/06/27/baseball-sized-hail-smashing-into-panels-at-150-mph-destroys-scottsbluff-solar-farm/
No mention of insurance.
FEMA categorised this area as the highest rated risk of heavy hail on the US National Index. So, presumably the panels were fairly standard, designed for hail, rain, snow, sleet, etc. but not hardened further to withstand something that has happened before in this area, is in fact very well known to happen (insurance premiums are higher in this area because of hail damage), and should’ve been planned for. Incompetent, cheap money-making scam.
The hail was ‘exceptional’. Yeah ….
Its climate change wot dunnit.
“we are now studying ways to control the size and weight of hailstones in our area… but, first, we have to find ways to control the Climate in this area.”
It is mother nature, the earth, she is giving us a message – I do not want these things made with the use of child labour placed on the earth, use this land to feed the people.
No Steve. They built this array in an area well known for destructive heavy hail storms. This was going to happen sooner or later – they were lucky to get a few years use out of it.
That’s a dumb thing to do. But I’m glad they are destroyed.
The Precautionary Principle is being used to destroy economies and spend trillions. You would think the same Principle would have been used.
From Wikipedia:
I just posted this the other day on another thread:
“What windmill/solar advocates never address is this:
When storms occur and take down power lines, the current electricity generating plants do not get damaged. It only takes a relatively short time to repair the power lines to get people their power back.
With windmills and solar as your sole electricity generators, when a storm takes those out, you cannot get power to the people for many months or even years.”
So fortunately this array is not the sole producer of electricity at this time. But if that ever happens, how long do you think it will take to get it back up and running so people can have power?
Let me guess? College educated morons did this stupidity?
Harvard probably.
Attempts to use weather dependent energy to control the weather seem doomed to failure.
What was that old song?
“I fought the storm and the storm won …”
A circular logic conundrum.
Weather dependent AND weather susceptible
Weather killed the Climate Change saviour.
Story tip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnNto3MQGgQ
Oh. My. God..
Global depression in 3, 2, 1…
The comments on that page are a sea of panning statements – panning these stupid political clocks and panning the jet-set royalty and fatcats who show up to lecture us.
What happened to that stupid nuclear war clock, that seemed to always creep closer to midnight but never quite get there, no matter how many countries the Soviets took over, and the only solution promoted by the scientists who set up the clock was unilateral disarmament, ie give up to the Soviets.
So I guess now the new horologists want us to give up and let them collect their subsidies and guaranteed incomes without a fuss.
🖕
You see, you see, you see! If it weren’t for climate change this type of disaster wouldn’t have happened! Increases in the # of hail storms is happening right before our eyes! Also the diameter of hail is increasing all due to climate change. We are at another tipping point!
But need not worry as I’ve got a solution for the greenies. Just place sheets of plywood over the solar panels to protect them from these deadly hail storms! (Huge Sarc)
If you follow Daryl Orr’s 2nd Twitter post, it links to here:
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/06/27/baseball-sized-hail-smashing-into-panels-at-150-mph-destroys-scottsbluff-solar-farm/
There you’ll find one ‘Jason Bloomberg’ extolling the loveliness of renewable energy with this picture
The writings a bit small and says:
“”Cheyenne physician Jason Bloomberg said his solar panels have not been damaged after multiple hailstorms. (Photo Courtesy Jason Bloomberg)
Of course not Jason, yours are on trackers and can move out the way of hailstone storms. Or at least present a ‘minimum profile’ to oncoming onslaught.
What we all, when in ‘evil mode‘ which no-one ever is, would love to see is what a tornado does to Jason’s installation.
Or even just a big wind
(No, not you Jason – I mean a big weather wind)
jason is just counting his lucky hailstones for the moment. hail storms don’t merely fall perpendicular to the ground, the wind drives the stones in whatever direction it blows and I’ve seen tempered plate glass windows shattered by hail stones much smaller than the baseball sized.
one hopes he bought a lottery ticket that day.
Did Jason tell us where he gets his electricity when his panels are presenting a minimum profile?
Maybe they should have installed hail protection netting like this?
https://eyouagro.com/blog/hail-netting-for-solar-farms/
This company claims energy loss from their transparent netting is only 5-7%, but I expect such a fine mesh would quickly accumulate dust, algae/lichen, etc. Relatively few transparent materials do not yellow or get cloudy when exposed to the sun for prolonged periods, not sure if that would be the case here or not.
But the claimed cost is only $400-$800 per acre, so surely that’s an easy tradeoff against losing your multi-million dollar solar farm? I’m not even sure how you could pay the labor to install it for $400 per acre, let alone poles, rigging, the netting itself, maintenance and replacement. Perhaps that’s an annual price?
I commend them for trying to take advantage of a new market segment, but this seems like good money after bad in terms of an investment in energy.
They should have thought about it and put a solar roof on it for protection-
Solar Roof | Tesla Australia
$400 to 800 per acre sounds like just the cost of the netting itself.
You still need poles and braces to hold the netting above the panels.
Those poles and bracing will also be casting shadows.
PS: Better not have any trees anywhere near that netting. I wonder how you would get all the leaves off in the fall. Perhaps electric leaf blowers from below. Plugged into the conveniently placed panels no doubt.
Here is a YouTube video of how the hailstorm looked on the ground in Scottsbluff itself. It gets kind of nasty at abut 3 minutes in:
06-23-2023 Scottsbluff, NE – Destructive hailstorm – YouTube
One more reason why solar panels and panel farms are not a good idea.
Hail insurance rates are very high along the transition of mountains to plains from Texas to Alberta. This particular supercell storm had exceptionally large stones driven by high winds. Tornados in places. But destructive storms are not at all unusual. I had two roofs torn off my house by hail in northwest Denver 1984 and 1990. In eastern Wyoming I have seen fields of corn and sugar beets cut to the ground.
I am told some developer was hoping to install two square miles of panels in a large solar farm about 20 miles west of Scottsbluff — it will never reach its design life.
The good folks of Scottsbluff may want to reconsider who they have in their government making these decisions to spend their tax money on “Rube Goldberg” schemes. Not very intelligent city offals, apparently. If they had researched the “climate…” hoax very thoroughly, they’d have found the info necessary to reject the plan.
city offals, working at the behest of the feral government.
The photo shows a pretty good hit rate of 75% or more on the panels – assuming those that don’t look smashed still work.
Even a crack or two can cut the efficiency of a panel. Especially if the solar cells themselves get cracked at the same time.
If there were any houses with roof-mounted PV systems in this storm, they were likely also destroyed.
This event should be no surprise, it is an issue I was trying to warn PV manufacturers about more than 20 years ago, without success.
To be “qualified” PV modules have to pass a bunch of electrical and mechanical stress tests, one of which is an ice ball impact test. The impact test specifies launching 25 mm diameter ice ball at the test module at a speed corresponding to the vertical terminal velocity. The implications of this test are that in order to pass, the cover sheet of glass has to be 3mm thick. Anything thinner breaks. Thus, just about 100% of all PV modules are manufactured with 3mm glass.
The problem is that 25mm hailstones are really only a moderate size and the ice ball speed of the test has no horizontal velocity component (thunderstorms have a lot wind, typically).
As a result a 50 or 75 mm hailstone can easily break the coverglass. While 25mm might cover most of the continental U.S., it is certainly not a maximum size for places where thunderstorms grow.
To make modules more resistant to hail would require thicker glass—but this would increase costs all the way from manufacturing to installation, so no one wants the only solution, outside of ill-informed system owners.
do the test labs throw continuous barrages of ice balls at the panel for a period up to a minute? one ball doesn’t fully simulate the numerous strikes of a storm that pelts an area with dozens or even hundreds of stones simultaneously.
No, the test consists of firing a total of half-a-dozen ice balls at different locations, non-simultaneously. You bring up a very valid point.
There is a pretty high correlation between areas with a lot of sunshine and areas where big hailstorms are common.
Even in the desert southwest, you can get massive hail storms during the monsoon season.
I remember seeing a map ages ago showing where the highest frequencies of large hailstones occur: one was Florida and the other was the strip just east of the Front Range of the Rockies, i.e. Colo, Wyo, and Montana. But yeah, it certainly didn’t mean they only happen in these locations.
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley,”
— Robert Burns
A couple of those panels look fine to me.
“destroyed” is such a strong word for the problem… its the protective replaceable glass cover that was damaged: notice how quite a few of them have no damage at all?
Y’all need to engage your brains before posting comments: a cracked up windshield isn’t a sign of a slaughtered driver.
The glass cover sheets are not replaceable as they are laminated with the solar cells and the rear sheet. Once the glass is cracked the solar cells will quickly start to corrode.
yeah, no, those aren’t laminate panels
When the windshield was cracked by the head of the driver, it is powerful evidence of a permanently impaired, if not dead, driver.
PARALLEL: karlomonte’s information about the effect of the cracking on the function of solar cells.
“reduced to a heap of rubble” accurately describes the effect of the hail.
Following your logic, we should count this pile of garbage as a treasure trove. “Wahll looky there. Those two bottles are still good!”
Where did you get the notion that these panels are covered with replaceable glass covers?
Perhaps it is you who needs to engage your brain.
Have you bothered to calculate how much an extra pane of glass would reduce the efficiency of those panels? Especially when the sun is not vertical to the panels.
Solar panels are sitting ducks for hail and high winds, as this vividly shows. That said, there are more than a few places on earth where solar should not be used. Obviously places with little sun or in the far north, but also places where there is hail (and tornados and high winds).
Funny that traditional power plants (gas, nukes) seem not be bothered by natural disasters and storms. The only one I can think of that was is Fukushima. Even wind turbines can be damaged or destroyed by too much wind.
But gee, I guess the greens must think that if we switch to all renewables, there won’t be any more storms!
Any information on pollution from the damaged panels getting into atmosphere or ground water?
When anyone asks me about renewable power sources, I give them this simple analogy
You have two fields, some miles apart – in field one, you install a 100Mn wind farm and a 100Mn solar farm, in field two, you install a 250Mn wind farm and a 250Mn solar farm, all financed via taxpayer funded contracts and subsidies
On any day when the wind is too low (less than 9mph), or too high (55mph or greater), at night, all that almost 1 billion pounds worth of kit, is producing zero, zilch power – in any given year, that happens a lot, more so during the dark, wind stilled winter months – you just need to check the generation graphs on the gridwatch website to see this is fact
These taxpayer subsidised renewable farms are replicated in their thousands, onshore & offshore and the same basic laws of physics apply as above
if someone asked me to voluntarily invest my hard earned cash, family home, pensions into these expensive, intermittent power sources, I would decline, as it is in reality, taxpayers cannot decline, these useless engineeringly incompetent power sources are just foisted on them
Indeed, if these renewable farms were simply left to market forces, no lucrative CfD contracts, no subsidies, no lucrative constraint payments etc, no one would invest in, or willingly subsidise them and they would simply fade into non existence
Intermittents will never replace coal, gas or nuclear power generation, it’s only a matter of time, probably after cold winters and power cuts, that our incompetent, ideologically compromised leaders cotton on, by then, society will have been plunged to new depths of poverty, starvation and cold related deaths
Wheres the analogy? I’d have called it a lecture.
“hail literally pummeled it to a pulp in just a matter of minutes”
I’ll drink to that!
*clink!*
My first thought upon reading the title was:
“HA!” 😀
All hail Joseph!
now I’m waiting for one those big tornados that hit mid America to waste a big solar or wind “farm”
Think large hurricanes—the tolerance for impacts with wind-driven trees is not very high.
A few years ago, a hurricane managed to destroy most of the solar panels in Puerto Rico.
I’d call it divine retribution. The good Lord clearly is peeved off by the pagan climate cult.
Better put up a windmill farm to replace that array. /sarc
story tip
Wind Turbines That Shake and Break Cost Their Maker Billions (yahoo.com)
Seems to me that fiberglass wind turbine blades will also be vulnerable to hail.
They hail probably won’t destroy the blades, but it will mess up the surface of them so that the efficiency goes way down.
They’re not that great in normal weather:
https://diysolarforum.com/threads/wind-turbine-blades-can%E2%80%99t-be-recycled-so-they%E2%80%99re-piling-up-in-landfills.29933/post-360732
“All hail, Solar panels” as Caesar might have said.
“The system’s 25-year expected lifetime was cut to down to less than 4 years, and makes you wonder if setting up such weather-vulnerable plants make any sense at all.”
I gave up preaching this problem over ten years ago. There has been a hailstorm with sufficient size hail to cause this somewhere in the broadcast area of the local TV stations Annually. Even the choir was not listening.
Over-engeneering stopped with six sigma.
Same thing happened to a solar farm not too far from my little piece of Texas about a year ago. I suspect that there have been many more that don’t make the news.
“literally reduced to a heap of rubble”
I don’t think this means what you think it means.
I also noticed the “favorite word” repetition, but the panels look very bad. “heap of rubble” might be okay as hyperbole.
Well, the panels are all still in place, just shattered surfaces. Nowhere close to rubble.
The geniuses who proposed & promoted this through approval and implementation didn’t think of hail storms. And/or they simply didn’t care if the entire thing got destroyed.
Apparently they asked about hail storms. The salesman assured them the panels wouldn’t be broken by hail, and demonstrated by having a batting machine fire baseballs at a panel at 100mph. Two problems with that: a baseball-sized hailstone is much heavier and harder than a baseball. And terminal velocity is 150 mph – that’s over double the energy of 100mph.
During the six years I spent at Cannon AFB, NM, I saw baseball-sized hail twice. That wouldn’t be all the times it happened, just the two times it was falling when I finished a shift, and I waited for it to end rather than walking out the door and risking concussion.
The best-laid plans of mice and men…
FWIW, Scottsbluff is one of the most prone areas to large hail in the US; Not a great place to be considering a solar farm:
Nebraska comes in second after Colorado in number of hail events per year, and most of Nebraska’s hail storms are in the west end, in the area directly north of Colorado. Guess where Scottsbluff is…
If only there was a national weather service or something like that whom they could have asked about possible environmental problems which might be bad for thousands of glass panels laid out in a field.
This plant was probably intended to replace part of the output of the now closed Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant.
OPPD, the owner of Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant, is planning on building [or contracting a private company to build and then OPPD would buy the power] two similar sized solar farms in the easter side of Nebraska. The light blue section in the chart above.
2 days before we arrived at a Texas RV park 4 inch hail had broken almost every windshield in the park. The roof on every RV was pock marked like a golf ball, with the underlying foam insulation crushed and broken.
Pole barns for RVs are very common in the US south where UV and hail are a problem.
Maybe this wouldn’t have happened if they had not tried to stop the climate changing. Doh!