CNN's Bill Weir reports from a solar-powered Florida town that endured Hurricane Ian with no loss of power and minimal damage.
#cnn #news
See how this Florida town survived Ian unscathed
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Babcock Ranch: finally someone was wise enough to build a solar powered community IN FLORIDA where the sun never takes a day off. Good for them!
@Justin Bake Then you just need more/larger batteries, right?
until a direct hurricane hit comes along. Perhaps the next one, that guy will be saying the same thing, thinking his solar panels are protecting him and he gets a direct hit from a hurricane and a 70 to 80 gusting winds.
just took a day off here didnt it?
@Justin Bake You need a better battery or inverter
Just the fact that not 1 solar panel got blown away is totally impressive.
@Mr Rey That’s like saying if you have enough fossil fuel electricity generation plants you’ll be fine, but if you don’t have enough generation plants, you will be limited. It’s also like saying if your truck’s engine has enough horsepower, you can pull a heavy load over the Rocky Mountains, but if you haul goods over with a Ford F150, you will have to take a lighter load. I’ve worked with enough automobiles to know what I’m talking about.
@Mr Rey I haven’t heard that. Thanks so much for letting me know. I want to learn more. But I can find only one report about one car that caught fire. There is even a picture of it and, clearly, that car did not explode as the headline claimed. So are there any other verifiable instance of EVs burning due to Hurricane Ian? If so, please let direct me, because that one report is not credible.
@Mr Rey
There are already 100+ kW/h batteries in existence.
@Pickle Ball
Over a 100 mpH …
Jennifer Langlow is my hero! I’ve heard about your community. You guys kick butt!
There is a lesson to be learned here, and sadly, I feel most still will not understand what that lesson is.
@Francis Maybe you should also be rich if you had higher education 😀
Vote all the republicans out of office is a start. Then all the corporate democrats after that. Replace them with progressives.
Hmmm, seems like the only place respecting nature survived nature.
@Lilli C Additional construction costs could be offset by reduced insurance costs.
Babcock ranch is more central florida compared to ft myers and cape coral.
So really they didn’t get it that bad.
What a perfect example of a self-sufficient community built to take 150-157 mph winds. This could be the future all over our country if certain people would just start supporting it and working towards this goal. I love it!
@DreycohV2 I have no problems with hydro or nuclear, have both in my state. Unfortunately not a lot of people want nuclear because they have an unfounded fear of it. I do know that wind/sun certainly isn’t going to sustain the majority of this country’s energy needs, especially with all those EV batteries.
@Jimmy Olsen, You tell me, sweetie, you seem to have all the info, and please provide your automotive source.
This is what working as a collective give us. Not what republicans believe, the cult of individuality. Me,me, me, I,I,I
@Jill Featherman unless you live in Alaska?
Most places have flowing “air”.
Some places would need to have a backup generator. Which I have for myself. Which most everyone here has at least one.
Half full🤷🏼♀️ Half empty 🤷🏼♀️
@amseam would that be because of water damage?
Now I just read that some EVs are catching fire.
Oops 😬
This is the future folks!
Please let’s ALL get on board 😍
Absolutely impressive. This is a prime example of building smart and sustainably to combat the increasingly devastating effects of climate change. Built by engineers who use science as their foundation.
What I’m curious about, is if this community had been closer to the beaches of Ft. Meyers, would it have survived so well?!! If such a community was to be built need the beach would the homes have to be raised up to prevent flooding, and would the solar panels have made it through Hurricane Ian?!!
What I’m curious about…why do people NEED to build near the beach? Those building permits should not be written. Notice that this community retained a chunk of open land; that was likely a huge source of protection, especially because it gives a place for water to go. Concrete built surfaces cannot absorb water. Learn the lessons already. Everyone wants to brag about a fabulous house on the beach???? Really? Not a goal for the future. The beach should be preserved for wildlife and wetlands. Let Mother Nature do her job.
A part of the design of the community was use of wetlands and connected pond and lake systems to absorb much of the surge so their flooding would be mitigated. That means they can’t build these types of structures right up on the beach like that, for those sorts of structures they would likely need to be on stilts or otherwise elevated structures with concrete or cinderblock walls for the bottom floor and ability to use sandbags or anti-flooding caulk/sealant or some other method for temporarily sealing the bottom floor door and window openings watertight so that even if the storm surge is higher than the stilts, the water won’t get through the bottom floor’s walls.
Given everything else discussed that was likely taken into account as a bad idea for what the goal was.
wow, this needs to go viral!
I do hope their experience and their knowledge will be transferred to those who will be working on the rebuild!
How all cities in Florida or hurricane prone areas should be built. This is pretty remarkable. Not one damn solar panel breaking is amazing.
250 billion and it could be done
Every community should be built to withstand the storms of the present and storms of the future. It is possible.
Anything is possible with enough money. Although I agree with you, it’s politically impossible to get the kind of agreement you’d need for that.
This is an awesome story. A part of the disaster for Florida that hasn’t been talked about much is the possibility of a vast reduction in property values because a lot of Florida will be judged as uninhabitable in the face of more common hurricanes and rising sea levels. These people have pointed the way for a kind of construction that might make that less true.
Also, loved the structural engineer. I was an engineer that grew up at a time when women engineers almost didn’t exist. I thought that might be because women for the most part couldn’t be engineers. Alas, one more thing in my life that I have been massively wrong about and I’m happy about that in this case.
lol – I have a very feisty mother. She always said there are two things women cannot do that men can do.
1) Be sperm donors.
2) Make men grow up.
Lower property values would be great in solving the housing crisis though. Yes please.
@Ian Homer Pura Not if the property values everywhere safer go _up,_ and the values in risky areas tank so much that nobody’s willing to develop any more than places to shove poor people to die in the next hurricane. Property values absolutely need to go down, but that particular way will just make inequality even more lethal.
@digiryde I told my girls that too!! One is an BSEE, one is MS biomedical engineer, one is an MSRN. I pushed the math and science!
@Cindy Johnson Good for you! My mom was a elementary science teacher. My father a Physics teacher. She was a teacher back in the days when being pregnant was a bad moral message (yeah, even if you were married), and single female teachers were considered ‘loose’ if they were around men without a chaperone.
The good old days… May God save us from ever going back to those days again.
Wow! Fabulous story! Same thing here in Colorado where we can get some scary hale storms. You’d think hale would decimate solar panels but they actually protect roofs!
Depends on the size of the hailstone but hail does indeed destroy solar panels
@Sparkle Evenmore Would love to see the info on that. Please provide! Thanks.
The engineer lady gave me chills a very thoughtful lady
ya the moment she says “we build to wind loads and stress tests” I’m like k ya this is a smart town. gotta love it, hopefully more towns like this pop up there in the US and here in Canada
i especially liked what she said about not feeling guilty because they were able to help others. imagine if everyone in florida was this resilient? hurricanes would be no problem
Kudos to this community. An environmentally conscious, proactive and progressive community that was prepared. Not exactly what comes to mind when you think of Florida.
Thank God for science and facts. I have been saying all along that while we all feel sorry for the people who lost their lives and possessions florida’s poor planning is inexcusable. How can you live in a flood plain that is under 100 feet above sea level and not prepare for flooding? How can anyone live in a manufactured home or a trailer in a hurricane zone?
I live in a 34 foot class A RV with the roof covered in solar panels, and a huge Lithium battery bank. I paid a lot of $$$ to do it so I could run everything (including AC, fridge, etc) without ever having to run my generator. I live in SE Arizona and we have had some amazing electrical storms this summer that have continually knocked out the power down here. I NEVER lost power since I am off-grid, and I never started my generator even once to top up my battery bank, and I never altered my lifestyle to save power either. People laughed at me, calling me a fool for spending a lot of $$$ in order to be able to do this – yet who’s laughing now??? It’s too bad that folks don’t understand the value behind living off-grid. No power bill and the ability to live in total comfort year-around is a no-brainer in my opinion. I’m sorry the people in Florida are suffering from the hurricane and wish them peace moving forward. Perhaps we’ll see more folks adding this simple solution of adding solar and a large Lithium battery bank when they rebuild their homes, it’s a terrific way to live and know that you will be just fine when the power goes down for days to weeks at a time.
This is amazing!!! What a great job they did planning this community. “The technology is here, we just got to get everybody on board and make it affordable” well done 👍🏽
4Ctina – I can’t believe how surprised everyone is – this is 2022 – we got subsidised panels on a couple of years ago. It’s a brilliant system. Unfortunately you have a lot of sceptics to work with. Good luck.
Great story, yes. There are often cases like this. There was that one house in Panama City(?) on the Panhandle that survived ’cause it was concrete and had barriers to divert the storm surge. Houses on stilts in Louisiana. We need better codes or to move off the coasts.
We need better code enforcement.