Michael Perron’s Post

https://lnkd.in/eUQQiA4Q Excellent article from Andreas F., Lorraine Monaghan and Brian Allen of Aon on the important topic of Best Practices for Mitigating Hail Damage to solar projects. For some excellent guidance on stowing solar projects, see this paper from VDE Americas and Wells Fargo (Ken Elser, Peter Bostock and Jon Previtali) https://lnkd.in/eWavHx6Y Some notes I jotted down reading the article perhaps providing more clarity: 1. Though the Fighting Jays hail event in March significantly damaged the project, the hailstorm reportedly only impacted a portion of the operating portion of the project, and the construction section of the project reportedly sustained little damage. 2. While the 2019 Midway loss was a large loss, it would not be the same sized loss today given common limitations on coverage today for testing for Microcracking. Much of the $70-$80m loss was paid because the Electroluminescence testing to verify whether or not a given panel sustained microcracking was more expensive than actually replacing the panels. Today there are sublimits on policies for hail as well as for testing. Further, testing can be done on a sampling basis instead of every panel.  3. The authors suggest 40% of solar claims are hail claims. This may be true, but GCube Insurance suggests only 2% of solar claims are hail claims, while 55% of the dollars for these events are associated with hail. The authors suggests hail is getting larger. I've heard others say the contrary. Either way, I believe the most significant reason we are seeing more claims for hail impacting solar farms is that there are more projects in harm's way today in areas that were fields before. It would be interesting to see how hail claims impacting car dealerships have changed over time, in frequency and size of hail to get more reliable data. Using 4mm panels (instead of 2mm or 3.2mm) and chemically treated glass for projects in hail zones is good advice, but we need to find solutions for projects already in the field and planned with thinner panels. Stowing is our best option here, particularly if done against the wind. When projects are able to stow against the wind, damage is significantly reduced, though there are certainly challenges to doing this. Most of the large solar losses from hail did not fully stow as planned, for a variety of reasons. Fixing this problem will be key to bankable projects in hail zones moving forward. More focus on testing and automating stow protocols, along with improved weather tracking can help here. #resilience