Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Who could have predicted acres of fragile floating structures would be vulnerable to bad weather?
Madhya Pradesh: Summer Storm Damages World’s Largest Floating Solar Plant at Omkareshwar Dam (Watch Video)
Indore: A summer storm on Tuesday damaged a floating solar plant at Madhya Pradesh’s Omkareshwar dam. The floating solar plant, situated in the backwater of the dam, is the biggest of its kind in the world. A joint venture between Madhya Pradesh Govt and National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC), the project was nearly completed and ready for its launch. A part of the project became operational last week.
The project near the village of Kelwa Khurd, aimed at generating 100 MW of electricity, with additional capacities of 88MW at Indawadi and 90 MW at Ekhand village. However, on Tuesday, summer storms with the speed of 50kmph hit the project and threw the solar panels all around the place. No employee was fortunately injured.
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Read more: https://www.lokmattimes.com/national/madhya-pradesh-summer-storm-damages-worlds-largest-floating-solar-plant-at-omkareshwar-dam-watch-video-a514/
A video of the disaster;
Anyone who has ever owned a boat, particular a large boat which gets left in the water, knows what a harsh environment the sea can be. Some kind of failure was inevitable. If it hadn’t been a storm, there are plenty of other things which could have gone wrong.
Greens keep telling us we can expect more frequent and extreme superstorms – so what is the point of building vulnerable floating structures?
Plastics tend to disintegrate under tropical sunlight, especially when in contact with water or water spray. Ultraviolet from the sun drives exotic chemical reactions, which leads to chemical breakdown.
Metal sitting in water is difficult to manage, even stainless steel is not immune to corrosion. All metal structures in contact with water need to be protected with sacrificial anodes or comparable protective measures. Electricity and metal are an especially bad combination, any electrical fault which causes a current to run through metal in contact with water can cause corrosion to occur thousands of times faster than normal.
Let us hope developers and politicians take the hint, and stop throwing our money at inherently flawed ideas like floating solar arrays.
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Of course this wasn’t “the sea”, but even so freshwater reservoirs can get riled up quickly by high winds, and a bunch of solar panels on barges or floats just seems like a really bad design decision, as proven out. Sounds like somebody got bought off to sign off.
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I wonder if one of the selling points of the scheme is reduced evaporation loss.
I have observed water spouts in alpine reservoirs.
Wait ’til they try this boondoggle on The Great Lakes.
“what a harsh environment the sea can be” — well, this was on a lake behind a dam…but still, any large-ish body of water can be a harsh environment when the weather kicks up. Fresh water is less damaging to metal structures, but not benign.
Hope someone has learned a lesson.
Likely that the result would have been the same if the panels were land-mounted.
The ground doesn’t get whipped up into waves and change the attitude of the panels. Waves will twist the infrastructure floating support.
Umm, earthquakes?
Quiet chuckle….. And the do-gooders want Puerto Rico to install solar panels for reliable power. Ho many tropical storms per year hit the island?
Part of the problem is that a common characteristic of liberals is an attitude that they are smarter than average, when in fact they are probably not as smart. They read about some new technology in a prospectus, and think that it is the solution to a particular problem and accept the claim at face value. They don’t have the experience or technical background to realize that there are obstacles to the effective use of the new technology. They are often in positions that give them access to funds to implement the new technology because they don’t have the ability to be an engineer, and don’t have the wisdom to explore the caveats to its use.
“ probably not as smart” Surely, you jest.
Now we know where Homer Simpson got hired after being fired from the Nuclear plant in Springfield.
Wind packed it up like ice on Lake Michigan. A six-year-old could have predicted this idiocy.
The referred to Read More article said 50 kmh winds did the deed. It was designed to fail. I’m wondering if it’s an insurance scam of some kind, or a scam on the part of the developers to get paid for rebuilding.
buy reject panels from china for haul-away costs … install … destroy … get insurance with very high deductible so as to not scare the insurer … trash the entire thing … get paid for the 60% of paper value and still make a profit.
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Summer storms? When I lived in Scotland, a 50 km/h wind would have been called a moderate breeze.
I’ve read that there are more graduate engineers in India than in the USA and Europe combined. Perhaps they should have hired one.
Waiting for Luser or Fungal to appear to say how great floating solar panels are 🙂
50kmph = 31 mph
A few days ago (May 7th), we had sustained winds of 30 mph and gusts up to 58 (93 kmph).
Such being not uncommon here, I doubt anyone would float solar panels.
In fact, you have to shut down the wind turbines if it gets too windy.
More good news.
“Who could have predicted acres of fragile floating structures would be vulnerable to bad weather?”
The relevant question is, who walked away with the money?
Imbecilic projects such as these bring to mind the adage –
“Consensus science” is to engineering as “herbal remedy” is to medicine!
Brought to you by the department of “DEI” Engineering.
It’s just tax payer money so who cares right?
John Hultquist: “50kmph = 31 mph A few days ago (May 7th), we had sustained winds of 30 mph and gusts up to 58 (93 kmph). Such being not uncommon here, I doubt anyone would float solar panels.”
Big winds have a habit of blowing through central Washington State on a regular basis. Using funding from a government research project, we could float some of these solar panels on Lake Roosevelt behind Grand Coulee Dam to see if similar results are experienced. We could also float some ocean wind turbines to see what happens to these turbines when a sustained 80 mph wind over Lake Roosevelt occassionally occurs.
They’re pretty regular out here on Whidbey Island.
I forgot to mention, I live near Ellensburg — about 5 miles from the airport KELN.
It is almost as if the entire climate change propaganda operation is intended to destroy our wealth and our society rather than what they claim it is all about…
Yes. but the winds were caused by climate change. This clearly shows why much more must be spent to stop it. At least that’s what the green fascists will say.
what do the fish below these panels eat?