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| This
solar panel has been
struck by an ice ball
during a durability
test at the Renewable
Energy Test Center in
Fremont, Calif.
Credit: RETC |
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As
Texas becomes the
country’s leader in
generating solar
power, the state’s
propensity for severe
hailstorms is a hazard
that energy companies
aim to manage.
I’m writing about
solar and hail this
week, not because of
any incident, but
because of a lack of
incidents. We are near
the end of the spring
and summer hail season
and there has been no
high-profile hailstorm
that wrecked solar
panels.
If there had been, you
probably would have
heard about it,
considering the Trump
administration’s
enthusiasm for
highlighting any
supposed problems with
renewable energy.
Some of this lack of
damage may be good
luck. But some of this
is likely because of
improvements in the
way solar companies
assess their risk and
take steps to avoid
severe losses.
The solar industry has
improved the
durability of panels
and developed testing
methods that help
answer questions about
how certain panels
will perform when
slammed with hail.
Much of that testing
occurs in a lab in
California’s Bay Area
where technicians fire
balls of ice from a
“hail cannon” and then
review the damage.
I spoke with Brian
Grenko, CEO of VDE
Americas, about what
happens in the lab and
how his company is
using the results.
“If you really want to
understand how a solar
panel, or how
anything, can
withstand hail, you
have to test it until
it breaks,” he said.
“Otherwise, you don’t
really understand the
actual properties.”
His company is a
technical consultancy
based in San Jose,
California, a
subsidiary of VDE
Group of Germany. The
testing is done by
another VDE Group
subsidiary, Renewable
Energy Test Center, or
RETC, which has a lab
in Fremont, just down
the road from San
Jose.
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| An
employee at the
Renewable Energy Test
Center weighs an ice
ball that is meant to
simulate a hailstone.
Credit: RETC |
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RETC’s
employees get to fire
the hail cannons and
VDE’s employees do a
lot of math based on
analysis of the
results.
This month, the
companies announced
that they have jointly
developed a new test of hail resiliency. Lab
employees simulate a
hailstorm, with
varying wind speeds
and sizes of
hailstones. The goal
is to determine how
much punishment a
solar panel can take
before it breaks, and
also to see which part
of the panel is the
first to break.
Using the test
results, the teams
create a report that
shows the probability
of a panel’s failure
as the impact energy
from hail increases.
The detail in the
results is in contrast
to what would
otherwise be
available. Solar
panels must meet
international testing
requirements that were
updated most recently
in 2016.
These requirements
were not written with
hail in mind, Grenko
said.
Solar companies, banks
and insurance
companies use data
from the test to
determine a solar
project’s risk of hail
damage and how to
reduce that risk. For
example, a developer
may find that hail
risk is high enough to
invest in panels that
are more expensive and
durable.
But there is more to
this research than
determining the
strength of materials.
As I wrote last year, one way to reduce hail
damage is to use
trackers—systems that
shift the panel angle
to follow the sun—that
have a “stow” mode
with a vertical angle
to avoid direct hits
from hail.
Simply having a stow
mode isn’t enough,
though. The operator
of a solar project
needs to have access
to high-quality
weather reports that
provide a warning of
incoming hail. And,
the operator needs to
push the button to
shift into stow mode
or have an automated
process in place to do
so.
If that doesn’t
happen, the result can
be a situation similar
to what happened last
year at the Fighting
Jays solar project in
southeast Texas, where
thousands of solar
panels were destroyed.
Right-wing news
outlets highlighted the damage and interviewed
neighbors who spoke
about their fears of
environmental damage
from chemicals leaking
from the panels. (I
have seen no evidence
from reputable sources
that leakage from
chemicals in solar
panels is a danger to
human or animal
health.)
Texas’ solar power
growth has happened in
spite of its
vulnerability to hail
damage. A cluster of
states from North
Dakota to Texas has
the highest frequency and severity of hailstorms,
according to the
Federal Emergency
Management Agency.
Hail is most common in
places that also have
a high incidence of severe thunderstorms and
tornadoes, which
is tied to a region’s
topography, according
to the Midwest
Regional Climate
Center at Purdue
University.
Grenko explained that
most early
utility-scale solar
development happened
in places like
California and
Arizona, which have a
low risk of hail.
Then, as the prices of
solar panels fell in
the 2010s, the
industry expanded to
many other places,
including those with
higher hail risk.
A key event in
understanding the risk
happened in May 2019,
when a hailstorm wrecked about 400,000 of the 680,000 panels
at Midway Solar
Project near Midland,
Texas. The insurance
loss was about $70
million.
The size of the loss
led solar companies,
lenders and insurance
companies to realize
that they may have
underestimated the
risk of hail.
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| The
“hail cannon” is
loaded with an ice
ball that will be
fired at a solar
panel. Credit: RETC
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Midway
“was the one that kind
of started it all” for
understanding the
threat of hail to
utility-scale solar,
said Daniel Schreiber,
a Texas-based
meteorologist and
senior vice president
for J.S. Held, a
consulting firm whose
work includes
assessing large
insurance claims.
He is aware of the
various steps the
solar industry is
taking to be ready for
hailstorms. One
concern he has is that
hailstorms often have
high winds, and the
stow mode used to
reduce hail damage is
not well-suited for
reducing wind damage.
“When you have a storm
that’s coming at you,
that’s going to have
both strong winds and
large hail, what do
you do?” he asked.
He thinks the answer
is to have
high-quality weather
information so a solar
project operator has a
sense of how severe
the wind and hail are
in a storm, and can
decide which threat
poses the greatest
risk.
If solar companies can
better understand
their hail risk and
take steps to mitigate
that risk, that’s good
news for Texas.
The state is in a
virtual tie with
California for having
the most electricity
generation from
utility-scale solar in
the first half of this
year, as I reported last week. And, based on the
number and size of
projects in
development, Texas is
poised to pass
California.
I am not suggesting
that hail is a
non-issue. Researchers
have indicated that
the severity of
hailstorms is likely to increase due to climate change. And
hail can be
devastating for the
roofs of homes and
cars.
But the solar industry
now has tools to
respond to anyone who
dismisses Texas’
potential by saying,
“What about hail?”
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Other
stories about the
energy transition to
take note of this
week:
Tesla Unveils
the Megablock, a Big
Battery for the
Grid: Tesla
has announced a new
energy storage
product, the
Megablock, which holds
20 megawatt hours, as
Julian Spector reports for Canary Media. The
company revealed the
product at the RE+
renewable energy
conference in Las
Vegas. The Megablock
is made up of four of
Tesla’s Megapack
energy storage systems
around one
transformer, with a
design that is meant
to be easy to ship and
install for companies
building utility-scale
energy storage.
Solid-State
Batteries Are Coming
Soon in These
Vehicles: Automakers
continue to make
announcements about
next-generation
batteries and their
timelines for release.
Some of those plans
involve solid-state
batteries, which use a
solid electrolyte
instead of a liquid or
gel, and have the
potential for much
higher ranges than
current batteries. Suvrat Kothari reports for InsideEVs.com
about which models
have the batteries or
will soon have them.
This includes several
Chinese models that
are unlikely to reach
the United States, but
also from brands such
as Dodge,
Mercedes-Benz and BMW,
among others. One of
the main themes is
that solid-state
batteries are still a
few years from being
accessible in models
that a typical U.S.
buyer can afford.
Can the
Whimbrel and Wind
Turbines Coexist?
Researchers are
looking at how the
construction of a
large offshore wind
farm off the coast of
Virginia may affect
the whimbrel, a brown
and tan shorebird, as
my colleague Charles Paullin reports for ICN.
This research is
sponsored by
environmental
organizations in
partnership with
Dominion Energy, the
owner of the offshore
wind farm. It
illustrates what
Paullin describes as a
situation in which the
turbines could harm
the birds, while the
emissions reductions
that stem from
offshore wind will be
helpful to the birds
in the long run.
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