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| Solar farm wrecked by giant hail! |
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| Haenk:
--- Quote from: langwadt on July 03, 2023, 10:13:09 pm ---flip them upside down? --- End quote --- That certainly won't help. Depending an the module, there even might be only a plastic film on the back instead of glass on top. After all, this is just a question of cost saving - I'd say it is overall cheaper to replace weather damaged panels (due to extremely heavy weather) than protect them all from damage in the first place. |
| NiHaoMike:
I'd say sell them at scrap prices to DIYers and let them figure out how to repair or repurpose them for use at home. |
| EPAIII:
"Useless"? Well, of course not. But you have to think of these things. Insurance may be the answer, but that makes the pay-period longer. Somebody's gotta pay the piper. Free power isn't free. --- Quote from: tom66 on July 03, 2023, 10:15:35 pm ---Random events like this is what you have insurance or pooled costs for, at the end of the day a tornado could have come right through and ripped all the panels off. I am sure other electricity infrastructure was damaged as well, and this does not inherently make solar panels useless. --- End quote --- |
| Alti:
I think hail or wind insurance is a waste of money in this GenPro Energy Solutions case. It would have been more profitable to invest in 10 locations all over the region, based on correlation of hail storms or tornado. Probability of natural disaster everywhere at the same time is zero. Insurer does exactly same calculus, adds markup and puts that on their bill. As for protecting panels against hail - I guess there is some hail size probability vs toughness equation that governs the cost it takes to make 1kWh long term. If it is ultimately cheaper to make 1kWh with thinner panel - why not? If it is cheaper to make 1kWh with thicker panel - go for it. They are the most competent to answer those questions. BTW, clearly there are at least two grades of panels installed there. So now they have even more data to feed the model and to infer whether to upgrade in direction of thinner or thicker panels. Their goal is not to avoid cracked panels, but to make money. Are they aware of it? Lets hope so. |
| tom66:
Insurance makes sense for events where the cost of recovery (replacing the majority of a solar farm for instance) is far beyond the resources of a single organisation. Sure, they could keep in reserve the funds to build another solar plant, or build a few more, but what if they don't have access to that capital? Their investors may not want to build 10 plants. So they might take out an insurance policy at (example) 0.1% of the value of the plant to cover the (example) 1 in 5000 chance of an event like this happening. Sure the insurance company makes a profit but there's nothing wrong with that - there has to be an upside for both parties. The same argument could be made for car insurance, beyond legally required 3rd party liability. Why not just replace the car if it is totalled? Well most people can't afford that... Very large organisations can afford to self insure. I doubt, for instance, Apple insures its campus building. |
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