The fire has variously been suggested as a Generator failure, a short circuit in a booth or a microwave. I guess someone was drying their weed in the microwave and it caught fire.

"Britain’s biggest community solar project has been forced to shut for the duration of its first summer by the government’s energy system operator to avoid overloading the local grid with renewable energy.

The north Devon solar farm was ordered to shut weeks before record high temperatures across Europe led to power supply warnings, due to concerns that the large amount of rooftop solar in the area could destabilise the power grid by triggering a “thermal overload”.

The shutdown is expected to cost the cooperative scheme’s nearly 10,000 members about £2m in lost revenue before it is allowed to restart again in September.

In a letter to more than 9,500 people and small business owners who own a stake in the Derril Water solar park, the cooperative’s board said the “unexpected” shutdown order was “enforced on our solar park and other generators in north Devon with no warning”.

The timing of the shutdown at the beginning of its first summer “could not be worse”, according to the board, and would “substantially impact” the scheme’s finances, including payments to members.

It said: “The interruption creates unexpected financial pressure and will impact our ability to pay members at least in the near-term.

“We are not clear on what triggered the shutdown, which came on the Friday before the half-term heatwave with no notice,” the board told the Guardian. “However, it does seem the network operators knew there was a looming problem.”

The National Energy System Operator (Neso) is understood to have ordered National Grid to shut a vital “super grid transformer” over the summer to prevent the rooftop solar in the area from driving the transmission network’s voltage beyond its safety limits.

The surge in rooftop solar power is particularly difficult to manage during the summer when long, sunny days lead to more generation than a local grid might need. Specialist equipment can help to manage potential voltage issues, but these upgrades have not yet taken place in the area near the Derril Water solar park."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/12/solar-farm-forced-to-shut-de...

Total solar eclipse this month. The UK has placed warnings in the press regarding solar power.

"Octopus Energy: Don’t use electricity during solar eclipse"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/08/10/octopus-energy-dont-use-electric...

Australia's Green Hydrogen dream is in disarray. The three project hubs have failed at a cost of $52 million.

https://www.news24.com.au/politics/australian-politics/energy-minister-chris-bow...

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https://www.masterresource.org/climate-extremism/psychedelics-climate-action-2/

Interesting

The colder, the drier.
The hotter, the wetter
...no?

From Report 24 site -
"It should prove the great promise of photovoltaics: huge quantities of cheap electricity, without any state-guaranteed feed-in tariffs. Five years after commissioning, Portugal's largest solar park is in insolvency administration. The plant produced less than planned, technical defects and fires caused long failures – and more and more solar power pushed the prices down to zero and below during the hours of sunshine. Now, among other things, a publicly funded battery storage system is to help.

Solara4 at Alcoutim in the Algarve is not a small experiment. Around 219 megawatts of installed power, hundreds of thousands of solar modules and a separate high-voltage connection made the park Portugal’s largest photovoltaic power plant when it was put into operation in 2021. The project was also marketed as one of the largest solar farms in Europe without a classic state feed-in tariff. Instead, a long-term private electricity purchase agreement should ensure calculable revenue. Audax Renovables had secured the energy from Solara4 as part of a 20-year PPA at a fixed price. Today, the British parent company Welink Energy Portugal 2 (UK) Limited has a different Vermerknote: “In Administration”. The insolvency proceedings have been ongoing since 11. June 2026. The plant continues to produce, but the company through which the project is controlled is under insolvency administration."

So ity was so good it was going to operate with no Feed-in-tariffs (FIT). And now it has seemingly gone bellyup.

https://report24.news/die-sonne-schickt-keine-rechnung-portugals-solar-vorzeigep...

Translated from the German.