Can hail damage solar panels?

If hailstones can cause significant damage to cars and homes, they can certainly damage solar panels. The New York Times reported that State Farm paid a total of $6.1 billion over 27,300 claims for hail damage to homes and businesses in 2023. The number of claims was 18% higher than the previous year, but the amount was more than 2022 and 2021 payouts combined.

Will hail damage solar panels?

This is the more serious question that nonresidential solar project operators are asking of us. The “solar belt” overlaps with the “large hail risk belt”.

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) confirmed that two billion-dollar weather and climate disasters were hail events that impacted Texas and Colorado in late April and late May, respectively. Utility-scale solar projects are located in both states, and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis recently signed a bill to catalyze more solar development.

Technology developed by KISTERS offers a new opportunities to do more than prove the occurrence of large hail events. A real-time hail monitoring system records the size of each hailstone larger than 5 mm, intensity, and the timestamp. Furthermore, it can report the distribution of hailstone sizes throughout the storm — and throughout your solar array. We recommend deploying one sensor for each square kilometer (or 0.40 square miles) with spatial coverage across the full project footprint.

Where to inspect solar panels for hail damage?

Empower your O&M team with detailed objective information about potential hail damage over space and time. Quickly determine which areas of the project need to be inspected immediately. Of course, severe hail damage will be easier to spot. While cell cracking is responsible for a large amount of the damage sustained by the PV modules, even micro cracks can lessen energy output.

What can guide inspections for micro fractures? The combination of panel durability test results from devices like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) PLatypus and hail sensor data will advanced understanding. In the meantime, alarms can be set and sent for hailstone sizes or intensities of concern. An online map displays a red, yellow, or green status of each hail monitoring station. Teams and users can select and review data for each location.

How to mitigate hail damage on solar panels?

Much remains unknown about the processes leading to hail growth. Hail data collected by sensors will deepen understanding and further develop forecast models.

In the short term, the same data can mitigate their impact. Fortunately, solar panels mounted on trackers (or tracking arrays) can be tilted and stowed in a position to reduce damage. Tracking companies suggest stowing 30-60 minutes before a storm is forecasted to strike. KISTERS also offers a hail forecasting data service to enable forecast alerts 48 hours before the storm and every 6 mins during a hail nowcast (60-90 minutes) ahead of potential hail impact.

Let’s stay ahead of severe weather together. Contact us to discuss your hail monitoring or forecasting interests.