Unusual weather has been plaguing Texas off and on for the last few years, and now thousands of solar panels on a South Bend County farm have been destroyed. Caught in a freakishly strong hail storm, the solar panels and other infrastructure in the area suffered massive damage.
Nick Kaminski, a Fort Bend County resident, spoke with ABC 13 about the storm. “The hailstorm we experienced Saturday morning was unimaginable. We’ve never seen anything like it in our lifetime.” He had seen the solar farm afterward and was concerned about them. “They look like somebody took a shotgun and blasted it into the air and let the pellets fall down and shatter holes all in them.”
Aerial video of the solar farm supports his statements and shows widespread and horrific damage to the farm and surrounding areas. For Kaminski and others in the area, the leaking chemicals from these broken solar panels is a huge concern. As they were knocked down to the already-soaked ground, they could have easily been absorbed and gone to the water tables in the area. “That’s what we take a shower with, we drink with. It could be in our water now.”
While “experts” told ABC 13 that the cadmium telluride in the panels does not dissolve into water, the National Institute of Health considers it to be an “Irritant” and an “Environmental Hazard.” These classifications alone should be more than enough to tell you that it has no business getting into the ground, especially near a water table.
Seeing just how obliterated these solar panels were should tell us all we need to know about using them. They are a great idea in theory and can help offset electricity costs, but they have no business replacing nuclear or coal-burning power plants. Not now, and likely not in the future. If they do, we are all going to be up a creek.
