The world’s largest floating solar farm was sunk by a storm just before launch – Are you interested in that?
Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Who could have predicted that acres of fragile floating structures would be vulnerable to bad weather?
Madhya Pradesh: Summer Storm Damages World’s Largest Floating Solar Power Plant at Omkareshwar Dam (Watch Video)
Indore: A summer storm on Tuesday damaged a floating solar power plant at Madhya Pradesh’s Omkareshwar dam. The floating solar plant, located in the backwaters of the dam, is the largest in the world. A joint venture between the Government of Madhya Pradesh and the National Hydropower Corporation (NHPC), the project is almost completed and ready for launch. Part of the project became operational last week.
The project, near Kelwa Khurd village, aims to generate 100 MW of power, with additional capacity of 88 MW at Indawadi and 90 MW at Ekhand village. However, on Tuesday, a 50 km/h summer storm hit the project and threw solar panels everywhere. Luckily no staff were injured.
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Video of the disaster;
Anyone who has ever owned a boat, especially a large boat abandoned on the water, knows how harsh the marine environment can be. Some types of failure are inevitable. If it hadn’t been for a storm, there are a lot of other things that could have happened.
The greens continue to tell us that we can expect more frequent and extreme superstorms – so what is the purpose of building vulnerable floating structures?
Plastic tends to decompose under tropical sunlight, especially when exposed to water or jets of water. Ultraviolet rays from the sun cause strange chemical reactions, leading to chemical decomposition.
Metal immersed in water is very difficult to handle, even stainless steel cannot avoid corrosion. All metal structures exposed to water should be protected by water sacrificial anode or equivalent protective measures. Electricity and metal are a particularly bad combination, any electrical problem that causes electricity to flow through metal when in contact with water can cause corrosion thousands of times faster than normal.
Let’s hope developers and politicians get the hint and stop throwing money at inherently flawed ideas like floating solar arrays.
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