This story originally appeared in Climate news from within and is part of the Climatic desk collaboration.
When a baseball-sized hailstone hits a solar panel at more than 90 mph, the result is not pretty.
We saw this in March, when a hail storm decimated parts of the 350 MW Fighting Jays solar project in southeast Texas. Images of thousands of panels filled with white circles of broken glass circulated on social media and in news coverage. On the right Departures They were eager to amplify what they saw as evidence of the unreliability of solar power.
The reality about hail and solar panels is more complicated and not as bleak.
Solar developers and manufacturers have taken steps to reduce the risk of hailstorms, involving a combination of sophisticated weather forecasting and panels that can pivot to avoid direct hits. I recently spoke to some of the people doing this work.
First, let’s state the problem: Climate change is contributing to an increase in the severity of storms, including hail storms.
At the same time, solar energy is the fastest growing source of electricity in the world. according to the International Energy Agencyand part of a mix of renewable sources that are on track to produce most of the world’s electricity by mid-century.
At this point, examples of hailstorms destroying solar farms are rare enough that they are still notable, such as this year’s in southeast Texas and one last year in western NebraskaBut what will happen in 20 years, when hail storms will likely be more severe and solar energy will cover much more ground?
There is no perfect method for protecting solar panels from hail, but there are ways to reduce the risk.
“There is real mitigation that can be done,” said Renny Vandewege, vice president of weather operations at DTN, the Minnesota-based company whose subscription-based products include weather forecasts for use by energy companies.
“We’ve patented the ability to measure hail size using radar technology,” he said. “By scanning storms, you get information that says a storm is producing hail that’s two inches in diameter, or whatever the scenario is.”
This data is most useful if a solar panel has equipment that can respond to an approaching storm by adjusting the angle of the panel to reduce damage.
Nearly all large-scale projects being built today use solar trackers, which are systems that rotate panels during the day to follow the direction of the sun. Some of these trackers have the ability to go into “sleep” mode, meaning they rotate quickly to avoid a direct hit.
For example, Nextracker, the California-based maker of solar tracking systems, sells a hail mitigation product that plugs in weather forecasts from DTN and others, and uses the data to adjust panel angles ahead of hail storms. hail. The systems are powered by software that can be used both on-site and remotely, and have backup batteries to operate during power outages.
“Will solar power systems continue to be developed and built in hail regions? The answer is yes,” said Greg Beardsworth, senior director of product marketing at Nextracker. “This will be achieved through a combination of understanding the magnitude of risk based on location, selecting the right mix of module technology and tracker storage capabilities.”