NREL researcher Kate Anderson critiques a PV array broken by hail at Fort Carson in 2019. Picture by Dennis Schroeder / NREL
VDE Americas and kWh Analytics have launched a brand new kind that assesses a photo voltaic web site’s hail threat and protection capabilities for the upcoming hail season. A number of, high-profile hail losses have precipitated insurance coverage challenges for photo voltaic property, fueling the trade to undertake resilience measures, similar to deploying thicker glass photo voltaic panels which can be much less susceptible to cracking. However for insurance coverage carriers to correctly consider threat mitigation, they want information.
To offer significant hail threat analysis information, VDE Americas and kWh Analytics have collectively developed the Hail Stow and Risk Evaluation tool, an easy-to-use evaluation for insurance coverage underwriters and financiers to substantiate and monitor hail protection performance. In the end, tasks that make the most of this way and show the effectiveness of their resiliency efforts ought to get insurance coverage credit score for doing so. The shape and proposals are primarily based on VDE’s complete greatest practices for hail protection, which covers, amongst different issues, proactive photo voltaic panel stowing, utilization of sector-specific hail forecasting and alert-based hail stow.
Hail stow refers to positioning photo voltaic trackers at steep angles throughout hailstorms to reduce affect and defend photo voltaic panels from injury. VDE Americas advises photo voltaic tasks underneath development to place photo voltaic trackers, the units that regulate the lean of photo voltaic panels, into hail stow instantly after panel set up. For tasks in operation, the corporate recommends deploying hail monitoring with redundant regional and site-specific alerts that set off automated or handbook hail stow confirmed by workers after triggering, testing hail stow capabilities prior to want and inserting trackers in hail stow place in a single day.
kWh Analytics’ and VDE America’s method to threat modeling leverages radar-based climate information and equipment-specific hail resiliency traits to create a data-driven mannequin that rewards resilient design and operational excellence. By incorporating dependable, site-specific hail threat information and tools efficiency metrics, this method creates a extra exact threat evaluation framework that advantages proactive photo voltaic homeowners and operators.
“As we navigate by a La Niña yr with extreme hail threat, the specter of injury to photo voltaic tasks is extraordinary, ” mentioned Nicole Thompson, Senior Supervisor, Information Science at kWh Analytics. “Our evidence-based premium differentiation rewards tasks with confirmed hail protection methods, sending an insurance coverage worth sign to the trade, and incentivizing the design, development, and operation of extra resilient photo voltaic property.”
kWh Analytics made the Hail Stow and Threat Analysis kind to be straightforward to make use of. There’s an choice to permit insurers to attach with tracker producers and unbiased engineers instantly for mission specifics. The Hail Stow and Threat Analysis framework works alongside VDE Americas’ Hail Threat Intelligence suite to handle photo voltaic tasks’ vulnerabilities to hail. The analysis gives insurers with standardized standards to evaluate hail readiness, whereas the Intelligence suite equips operators with sensible instruments — together with hail threat engineering experiences, a Hail Threat Atlas with ArcGIS mapping, technical steerage for stow procedures and forensic evaluation capabilities. Collectively, these assets assist photo voltaic tasks each strengthen their resilience in opposition to hail injury and show resilience to insurers.
“Safeguarding vitality property in opposition to extreme climate threat is vital to sustaining grid stability throughout the USA,” mentioned Brian Grenko, CEO and president of VDE Americas. “This collaboration transforms how the trade approaches hail threat by establishing clear, actionable tips for resilient design and operations, plus an incentive to show hail defenses are in place and dealing as anticipated.”
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