By Johan Jaques, Senior Meteorologist, KISTERS group
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2020 solar power was good for 3% of total energy production in the United States, with prediction of a 5% contribution in 2022. Meanwhile, its share may well rise to 14% of the U.S. total in 2035 and 20% in 2050.
With this current and anticipated increasing importance of solar power in a globally warming world, where precipitation events are likely to become more extreme following Assessment Report 6 (AR6) from the IPCC, it becomes increasingly important to protect solar panels against hazardous weather like wildfires, extreme winds, and large-hail events.
Occurrence of damaging hail
Hail, especially large hail, can damage solar panels both externally and internally (microcracks), leading to sub-optimal performance of the power output efficiency. On the long run, the functionality of the panels may further deteriorate as dust or water penetrates these cracks; even worse, malfunctioning solar panels might cause fires.
Large hail events remain rare. The period of occurrence is mainly limited to summer (April to September) and some areas are more prone to their occurrence than others. However, many areas in the Untied States, which are bound to be the largest producers of solar energy, are equally the areas most at risk.
Soaring insurance costs
Whilst these large hail events remain rare, the damage caused by them can be very significant. Due to a combination of a historical correction and some recent cases in Texas, insurance prices are soaring (rising as much as 400% over the last few years). Whereas in the recent past, one would have seen insurance polices with a minimum $100,000 deductible, or 5% of the physical damage limit, that has grown over the last few years to $250,000 and 5%, and there have been cases reported of $1,000,000 and 15% in Texas. Very often, maximum physical damage limits are defined in recent polices, instead of full physical damage coverage.
Utility owners are therefore increasingly looking at preventing costs and using weather data to protect their assets. There are different timescales over which awareness about the potential hail damage danger or actionable information can be generated from these data.
Protective measures: Forecast range timescale – up to 3 days ahead
In this timeframe, utility operators are seeking to raise their staff awareness of a potentially hail generating situation, where we typically would refer to the use of numerical weather prediction (NWP) models or statistical models. Though larger scale NWP models typically do not forecast the occurrence of hail directly, several model parameters, instability indices and simulated radar reflectivity can give indirect hints. There are several good models available, some in the public …….
Source: https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2022/06/utility-scale-solar-panel-hail-protection/