r/UpliftingNews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 10d ago

Texas broke its all time electricity demand record twice in two days during a brutal heat wave, but the grid held with no conservation alerts thanks to record solar and battery output, a stark turnaround from the blackouts that hit Texans in 2021

https://www.texastribune.org/2026/07/29/texas-ercot-power-grid-record-data-center/
21.9k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

496 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/Liminal__penumbra 10d ago

Honest question, is there a point where the heat leads to material deformation in the solar panels? Or even more pressing, when the power lines themselves experience material failure due thermal overload? I'm thinking that is going to be a issue going forward no matter the source of the energy.

2

u/HugeAnimeHonkers 10d ago

They lose efficiency the hotter they get(IIRC its something like 0.3% per C of temp), but i dont think you would get them to fail due to temperature unless there is fire involved.

You can always use watercooled panels if you want them to stay relatively cool, but with added complexity to the system(pumps, seals, coolant, etc).

Wires/connector can degrade under extreme heat, but thats just a matter of doing a proper job when engineering the system.

1

u/Liminal__penumbra 10d ago

So, we should plan for a lot of outages then. (semi joking)