Photo voltaic testing organizations are getting extra critical about testing photo voltaic panels’ resilience in opposition to hail injury.
VDE Americas and RETC, a part of the VDE Group, in the present day introduce the hail resiliency curve (HRC) check that simulates real-world hailstorm situations the place photo voltaic panels might face quite a few impacts from a spread of hailstone sizes and wind speeds throughout server storms. The HRC check includes firing a collection of small to massive hailstones at low to excessive speeds at photo voltaic panels representing particular fashions and types till glass fracture happens, which provides photo voltaic builders, homeowners and operators correct information for a panel’s “breaking level.”
“Typical hail threat fashions which are relied upon by many within the insurance coverage group are severely antiquated and outdated,” mentioned Brian Grenko, president and CEO of VDE Americas. “Hail resiliency curve check outcomes present a superior characterization of photo voltaic panel hail resiliency, decreasing uncertainty for traders and insurance coverage suppliers.”
Picture by Dennis Schroeder / NREL
The brand new HRC protocol will permit photo voltaic panel producers to optimize hail-hardened product designs and exhibit their efficiency benefits relative to traditional merchandise; challenge builders to carry out cost-benefit analyses of various photo voltaic panels and tracker tilt angle mixtures to mitigate hail injury threat; and insurance coverage suppliers to appropriately right-size hail injury protection and premiums primarily based on empirical information fairly than hypothesis.
“The photo voltaic business has lengthy wanted a extra rigorous strategy to hail testing,” mentioned Cherif Kedir, president and CEO of RETC. “The HRC check fills this information hole by offering our clients with actionable information on photo voltaic panel hail resilience throughout the whole impression vitality spectrum of real-world hailstorms. Furthermore, the rigorous pattern measurement ensures a extra totally vetted photo voltaic panel characterization.”
Glass, photo voltaic and different business consultants and stakeholders collaborated on the event of the check. Mike Pilliod, president and chief technical officer at supplies engineering agency Central Tension, assisted by offering recommendation on glass efficiency.
“What actually pursuits me as a glass reliability engineer are measurement techniques that present a statistically consultant chance of failure,” he mentioned. “The use case doesn’t actually matter. Automotive glass, cellphone shows, architectural glass — you identify it. In the event you’re not breaking glass — and never testing a consultant variety of samples to failure — you’re not doing all your job as a reliability engineer.
“In the event you step by step enhance kinetic impression vitality and check a significant variety of samples to failure, you’ll be able to generate Weibull distribution curves that plot the chance of glass failure on a product- or invoice of materials-specific foundation with low uncertainty,” Pilliod continued. “Now you’ll be able to stack these Weibull curves and evaluate them. Do the curves overlap? If not, you might be fairly sure that there’s a statistical distinction in resiliency.”
Early adopters of the check program symbolize a broad cross part of the photo voltaic manufacturing panorama, starting from publicly traded module and tracker firms to venture-backed startups.
“We use the HRC check to qualify glass suppliers and modern product designs,” mentioned Chad Medcroft, SVP of world vitality companies at flat-ground-mounted photo voltaic firm Erthos. “Because the inventor of Earth Mount Photo voltaic, our focus is on module resilience fairly than tracker operation. As a result of this strategy challenges conference, we fee rigorous third-party testing to present clients, insurers and finance companions full confidence in our expertise.”
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