With our world constantly grappling with the ill effects of climate change, calls for renewable energy sources ring increasingly louder. Solar power — with its virtually limitless energy supply — plays a crucial part in our clean energy transition.
However, climate change presents a double-edged sword for the solar industry: Despite driving the need for more solar installations, it also intensifies the extreme weather events negatively impacting these facilities, particularly destructive winds and devastating hailstorms.
This paradoxical challenge underscores the value of enhancing the resilience of solar infrastructure in the face of a constantly changing climate. Leveraging cutting-edge weather intelligence to understand the impact of severe weather on solar facilities — and mitigate these risks — can help us power the planet for generations.
The rising challenge of extreme weather
With climate change altering weather patterns worldwide, our planet experiences an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Complicating matters for solar power plant operators, areas previously unaffected by severe storms are now experiencing them. From a polar vortex in Texas to extreme heat in Oregon to hurricanes in Louisiana, the U.S. saw a record-breaking 20 weather or climate disasters in 2021, each causing at least $1 billion in damages. Similar weather challenges are being experienced globally.
Although manufacturers design solar panels to withstand harsh weather conditions, two weather phenomena pose severe risks to solar installations:
1. Wind: High winds — from hurricanes, supercells or tornadoes — can cause damage to solar panels and supporting infrastructure. Sudden gusts or changes in wind direction can cause uplift, blow debris into panels and other structures, twist brackets or shear the bolts holding panels in place.
2. Hail: While hailstorms are less frequent than wind events, hail leads to more catastrophic damage ranging from visible damage to the panel’s external surface to internal components or microcracking, reducing panel efficiency and making them more vulnerable to malfunctions or premature failure.
Given the extent of severe weather events, the solar industry must invest in greater resilience to avoid future losses.
Extreme weather’s financial impact on solar power plants
Beyond physical damage, operational disruptions and financial losses can be significant, especially as solar plants grow larger. Since 2015, insured losses associated with extreme weather events are roughly twice the magnitude of those stemming from natural catastrophes. In fact, high wind events are a leading cause of insured losses in fielded solar assets. Based on the severity of losses, a widely publicized hailstorm in West Texas damaged some 400,000 PV modules, resulting in the largest single solar insurance claim to date.
Vaisala
Insurance claims data also reveals hail’s outsized impact on the solar industry. While only 1.4% of solar insurance claims are hail-related, they account for a staggering 54% of incurred costs. This disproportionate financial burden has led some insurance companies to cap hail coverage at $10 million, forcing solar plant operators to seek multiple insurers to adequately cover their risk.
Whether due to high upfront costs, misaligned incentives or a lack of information, many organizations need to invest in greater resilience to lower their risk.
Building resilience through advanced weather intelligence
While weather-related hazards are unavoidable, catastrophic project losses are not. Weather monitoring and forecasting technologies help operators, builders and insurers better understand and mitigate weather-related risks.
For solar power plants, weather intelligence stands atop a three-legged foundation:
1. Historical data.
2. On-site observations.
3. Advanced forecasting.
Equipped with evidence-based weather information and advanced weather forecasting, solar plant operators, manufacturers and insurers can implement timely protective measures for developing threats, improve plant design decisions and optimize insurance coverage.
Some solar tracking systems move panels vertically to minimize hail damage or lay flat to reduce wind resistance. While not all plants have this capability, a recent RETC study revealed that 80% to 90% of hail damages can be mitigated by stowing panels at a 60° angle, significantly reducing potential damage with sufficient warning. Understanding local weather patterns and probable risks allows developers to build stronger mounting systems or more durable panels from the outset. Detailed weather data can also help insurers more accurately assess risks, potentially leading to more comprehensive and affordable coverage options or parametric insurance, which pays out based on predefined weather parameters rather than assessed damage.
Also see: What to do when hailstorms impact the solar module
While the benefits of weather intelligence for solar power plants are clear in theory, real-world applications demonstrate its tangible value in protecting solar assets and optimizing performance.
Weather intelligence in action at a solar site
An excellent example is RayGen’s power plant in Carwarp, Australia, which uses large heliostat mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto photovoltaic modules. The heliostats can take several minutes to drive to a safe horizontal position, and this “stow” process should be completed while wind loadings remain within drive motor operating limits.
RayGen sought an alerting solution with typical five-minute anticipation to avoid wind-induced damages, eventually selecting Vaisala’s WindCube — a lidar-based remote wind measurement system — to protect its equipment from damaging winds and maximize operational uptime.
Vaisala
Lidar measurements reveal the wind flow at the plant location and in the area surrounding the site and can be rendered into easy-to-understand wind vectors. The RayGen study involved characterizing gust events on reconstructed wind vectors to optimize specific solar farm stow operations. With real-time 3D wind maps up to more than 10 kilometers around the power plant, RayGen operators can make informed decisions to move heliostat mirrors to a suitable angle or stow them in a timely manner, thus minimizing the damage risk and likelihood of costly repairs.
RayGen’s success with its flagship technology demonstration project validates the potential for advanced weather intelligence to significantly enhance the resilience of solar power plants going forward.
Better weather intelligence = greater solar resilience
The key to future resilience lies in a “virtuous circle” of weather data:
• High-quality on-site observations feed into weather forecasting models.
• Forecasting models produce more accurate local forecasts.
• Improved forecasts and real-time, on-site data enhance decision-making.
• Over time, this growing weather information database further refines forecasting models and strengthens our understanding of local weather patterns.
In the face of a changing climate, the solar industry must adapt to more frequent and intense severe weather events in new geographies. By embracing advanced weather intelligence solutions, solar power plant operators can make evidence-based decisions that enhance resilience, optimize solar panel performance and protect their investments over the long haul.
Also see: Solar modules pass strict hail-resistance test
The path forward is clear: Integrating comprehensive weather monitoring, forecasting and analysis into every stage of a solar plant’s life cycle — from initial site assessment through ongoing operations — will help the solar power sector build the resilience necessary to weather tomorrow’s storms. (RP/hcn)
