Regardless of what I want, my phone keeps an eye out for trending stories in the world of Renewable energy.

Part of the hyper-saturation of the ideological market means converting the masses through ‘good news’ stories. There are fewer of those these days, with the rapid expansion of the not in my backyard! movement keeping pace with government roll-outs.

If I’m lucky, click-bait gets the better of the algorithm and something fun pops up.

This time, it was an article from the Conversation which began:

‘As the world heats up, solar panels will degrade faster – especially in hot, humid areas. What can we do?’

Well… Not build our energy grid on the back of a solar technology. That would be the logical response.

It’s a bit like the revelation Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen had last week when a few unloved transmission lines fell down in the wind. Imagine how much worse the problem would be if, say, energy plants were built in the middle of nowhere requiring thousands of kilometres of transmission lines strung across difficult to reach terrain. It’s not as if that would expose the grid to a major security risk the next time it gets a bit windy, or burny, or floody…

Written by a research fellow at the School of Photovoltaics and Renewable Energy Engineering at the UNSW, the article repeats the Utopian delusion of creating an 82 per cent renewable energy grid in Australia by 2030. And sure, if you destroy the coal-fired power plants with explosives, you could reach ‘82 per cent’ but 82 per cent of what…?

Pointing out the obvious – that solar panels are installed outside (no doubt to catch all that ‘free’ sunlight) – the article correctly notes that solar panels can be damaged by the weather. My favourite are those pesky tennis ball-sized hailstones we used to get when I was a kid. Did Bowen’s department include, ‘Holy heck, huge Summer storm!!!’ in the costings? Somehow I doubt it.

Moving on. Because ‘the Earth is getting hotter and extreme weather arrives more often’ these brilliant new solar farms are going to see their output fall over time due to increased damage.

Now forgive me if I have misunderstood, but I thought using billions of dollars in public money to replace our baseload grid with ‘82 per cent renewable energy’ was meant to fix the climate. Stop the temperature rising. Keep the tides at bay. Reverse the global boiling thing… That’s the justification we keep being given as our money wanders out the door. Experts cannot have this cake and eat it too unless they’re going to admit that China and India are making this huge public expense totally pointless for Australians.

Come on, fess up Minister.

This piece warns that 2059 will be the peak period for solar panel degradation – which means that none of the solar panels installed today need to worry because they’re all going to be ripped out and thrown into landfill long before then.

At least the article goes into the weaknesses of solar energy, including its natural (and substantial) loss of output over time. Critics can hate on nuclear and coal all they want, but at least you get what you pay for. Consumers are beginning to learn a similar lesson about e-cars … they’re expensive as heck, overstate their range, take way longer to charge than promised, perform poorly in pretty much any weather condition that isn’t a showroom, lose charge over time, and then demand a battery replacement that’s worth more than a new petrol car.

Solar panels – aside from being battered by nature out of a cyclic sense of irony – are susceptible to delamination, discoloured encapsulants, ribbon corrosion, and internal circuit failure, or so says the article.

I can add one from personal experience.

When the first rooftop solar craze was sparked under the Labor Party, a whole stack of micro companies started up to take advantage of government handouts. It was a fake market manipulated by Parliament using public money. These solar companies installed Chinese-made solar panels on Australian homes. When those panels died unexpectedly, as ours did, it turns out no one will help you. The company cannot honour the warranty because it doesn’t exist. The Chinese manufacturer is unreachable, and the Australian consumer watchdog simply shrugs its shoulders. While your business has to adhere to strict rules, these ones clearly don’t.

Going back to the article, it says, ‘At present, very few solar developers are taking climate change into account when they buy panels. They should, especially those operating in humid areas.’

If you were an engineer taking this article and its claims seriously, you would not pick solar panels at all. They represent a costly investment – not only in money but land and raw materials. If they’re going to be especially vulnerable to hot weather, keep in mind we are talking about Australia which boasts some of the hottest temperatures on Earth, a sensible person would commission nuclear plants instead. As a bonus, they fulfil the activist brief of saving the climate.

You build them once. They last more than 100 years. We’ve got billions of years of fuel reserves sitting in the desert. Nuclear couldn’t care less what the weather is up to, and they put out steady baseload power.

Although I do find myself agreeing with the conclusion of the article.

‘These issues can be fixed. The first step is to understand there is a problem.’

Indeed. The problem is this obsession with solar and wind – inferior, expensive, and ultimately incapable of creating a cheap, reliable, and stable future.

Whatever the weather.