Skip to main content

SOLAR PANELS AND WEATHER – CAN SOLAR PANELS WITHSTAND HURRICANES AND HAIL?

By

Solar panels are an excellent way to lower energy costs and reduce your overall carbon footprint, as well as make your home stand out from the competition when it’s time to sell. However, they do represent an investment. While that investment will pay for itself over time, you do want to ensure that your solar panels are not going to be damaged by weather events. With hurricanes hitting the news regularly and hailstorms a common problem throughout the country, you need to understand how the weather affects your solar panels.


Solar Panels and Inclement Weather

In general, investing in solar panels is a wise choice, and the majority of the panels on the market today can withstand the inclement weather of their areas. In fact, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory studied 50,000 solar panel energy systems and found that only 0.1% of all systems were reported as damaged. That said, there are two types of weather events that do have the potential to damage your solar panels, and you need to be aware of these. Those events are hail and hurricanes.

How Hail Affects Solar Panels

Hail is a reality in many parts of the country, so the manufacturers of solar panels work to make their products strong enough to withstand most hail storms. In fact, most solar panels are designed to handle hail up to one inch in diameter falling as fast as 50 miles per hour. For hail storms that are more intense than this, solar panels tend to continue to stand up well. When damage occurs, it’s typically isolated to just one or two of the panels across an entire system. It takes sustained hail hitting the same area of the solar panel repeatedly to cause significant damage.
One way to minimize this risk if you live in a hail-prone area is to install smaller solar panels instead of one large one. If you have a hail storm that does damage a portion of your solar panel system, the cost to replace the damaged portion will be much less.

How Hurricanes Affect Solar Panels

Hurricanes are fairly rare occurrences, but they are quite powerful when they do hit. The biggest risk to solar panels in a hurricane is the risk of becoming dislodged from the place the panels are installed on the roof. However, solar panel manufacturers understand this risk, and they design their systems to withstand strong winds. Many can withstand winds of as much as 140 miles-per-hour.
When Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey in 2012, the state had just installed a large component of solar panels. After the hurricane, only a few of the metal casings covering the wires from the panels were damaged in flooding, and two panels came loose from a large system, but otherwise the solar panels were not affected by the strong winds and pounding rain.
Flooding and sustained rain during and after a hurricane can increase the risk of water damage to panels. This risk is heightened when seals on the panels are damaged or deteriorated. To prevent this risk, make sure you have your panels inspected and resealed regularly to ensure they are water-tight.


More Common Risks

Hurricanes and hail are serious weather events, but for those with solar panels, direct storm damage is unlikely. If anything, it would be more productive to worry more about staying safe with your power generator in these situations. What is more likely is damage due to falling debris when storms hit. Trees near the solar panels, for instance, that fall in a storm can cause costly damage. Debris on the solar panels can come loose, blow around and damage the panels.
If you are considering solar panels, but fear the impact of extreme weather, don’t worry. These products are designed with weather events in mind. With the right installation, you can enjoy their benefits with minimal risk, even when weather strikes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HOW TO RECYCLE: THE WORLD’S BEST PRACTICE

By
Recycling is one of the three components of the waste hierarchy “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle”. Archaeologists believe that this practice dates as far as the 4 th  century due to no evidence of much household waste like pottery and ash. In the pre-industrial period, people recycled metals and melted it down for other purposes, while paper recycling was recorded first time in Japan in 1031. The reason for this was merely economic because the raw materials were more expensive or obtaining them was difficult. Then industrialization started and the demand for affordable and cost-effective materials bloomed. Scrap metal became wanted goods for the railroads in the 19 th  century, and that continued in the 20 th  century when automobile industry started buying it too. They also sold their used metal and turned the money around. Schweppes bottles were among first to be recycled in Great Britain and Ireland at the beginning of the 19 th  century for a refundable deposit,...
Post a Comment
Read more

OCEAN ANIMAL EXTINCTION: HOW CAN WE HELP?

By
Post a Comment
Read more

NOISE POLLUTION

By
Most of us are very used to the sounds we hear in everyday life. Loud music, the television, people talking on their phone, the traffic and even pets barking in the middle of the night. All of these have become a part of the urban culture and rarely disturb us. However, when the sound of the television keeps you from sleeping all night or the traffic starts to give you a headache, it stops becoming just noise and start turning into noise pollution. By definition, noise pollution takes place when there is either excessive amount of noise or an unpleasant sound that causes temporary disruption in the natural balance. This definition is usually applicable to sounds or noises that are unnatural in either their volume or their production. The following contribute to noise pollution - Industrialization: Usage of big machines in industries which produce a large amount of noise  Poor urban planning : Congested houses, large families sharing small space, fight over parki...
Post a Comment
Read more