Davin News Server

The World's Largest Floating Solar Farm Wrecked by a Storm Just Before Launch

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.

[...]

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; 

https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1786739769201840129/vid/avc1/720x1280/YX0
ABnPTQyGuvHc9.mp4?tag=14

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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1.	Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*
2.	SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
3.	Solyndra ($535 million)*
4.	Beacon Power ($43 million)*
5.	Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
6.	SunPower ($1.2 billion)
7.	First Solar ($1.46 billion)
8.	Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
9.	EnerDel's subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
10.	Amonix ($5.9 million)
11.	Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
12.	Abound Solar ($400 million)*
13.	A123 Systems ($279 million)*
14.	Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*
15.	Johnson Controls ($299 million)
16.	Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
17.	ECOtality ($126.2 million)
18.	Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
19.	Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
20.	Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
21.	Olsen's Crop Service and Mills Acquisition Company ($10m)*
22.	Range Fuels ($80 million)*
23.	Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
24.	Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
25.	Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
26.	GreenVolts ($500,000)
27.	Vestas ($50 million)
28.	LG Chem's subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
29.	Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
30.	Navistar ($39 million)
31.	Satcon ($3 million)*
32.	Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*
33.	Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)

*Denotes companies that have filed for bankruptcy.