[zdragnar]

There was a four thousand acre solar panel setup in Texas that was demolished by a hail storm a month ago.

Despite the "everything in Texas is bigger" motto, worldwide 3 million doesn't sound too far fetched if a single install in Texas is already 4,000 acres.

[epistasis]

That's surprising, I've seen lots of photos of solar farms post hail storm where there was minimal damage. Perhaps the hail is bigger in Texas (at least for that storm).

[zdragnar]

Reports put the size around that of a golf ball with some upwards of a baseball. Those larger ones definitely have the energy to wreck anything but the most resilient glass.

A similar event happened in Nebraska last year (I think). They got the plant back up and running in roughly six months, which is quite the feat given the amount of labor disposing and installing new panels involves.

Then again, six months is a very long time for a plant to be producing no power at all. Keeping these plants spread out will increase the odds of outages but will be necessary for them to become critical infrastructure.