Hial Damage to panel

[Charlie G]

Thought I would share some pics of hail damage from a recent story in Alberta Canada. 

Storm was short in duration, but included golf ball hail, a tornado, and intense rain/flooding. 

I have four 72 cell panels, but only 1 was damaged. 

[Dacian Todea]

Charlie,

I heard about that storm and we had something similar on my land last year but wind was from North west so panels were not affected (also my panels are at a steep angle so much lower chance of damage) but the two sides of the house I needed to repaint the next day as paint on walls and wood whas striped where that large hail heat almost vertical due to wind speed.

Luckily panels are getting cheaper and so is not a huge loss if a panel is lost but they are fairly strong so it is surprising to see that damage even with a flat panel that is worse case scenario for them.

There is not much you can do to protect against this or at least is not worth the trouble. 

[Charlie G]

Yeah, not much you can do to protect them. I bought these panels used in Florida for $85 each. The market is saturated with used panels down south.

Do you know why some many used panels are on the market?. Why do they get replaced?. I realize that panels lose efficiency with time, but it's a small loss that I wouldn't think would warrant buying new panels and paying labor to R&I.

[Dacian Todea]

Likely used solar panels come from large solar farms and for them is worth replacing 5 to 10 year old 230 to 260W panels with new 320W panels as additional land to make that difference will be more expensive.