Manufacturers of photovoltaic panels ensure that they use several protective layers to prevent hail from damaging the top layer of the panels. Unfortunately, larger hailstorms and increasing weather anomalies show that stronger photovoltaic protection will have to be used in the future.
One of the most dangerous weather phenomena that threatens photovoltaic panels is hail. Of course, we will most often encounter it at the end of winter and after the beginning of spring.
Solar panels should pass a hail test
Investing in good quality photovoltaic panels also undergo hail impact tests. Such a test involves subjecting the top layer of photovoltaic panels to mechanical loads caused by hailstones with a diameter of 25 mm at a speed of approximately 82 km/h.
The tests most often use metal balls that weigh even more than real hail. Good quality photovoltaic panels should withstand much higher loads than those caused by hailstorms.
However, such large weather anomalies are becoming more and more common, causing more and more damage to photovoltaics.
A huge hailstorm destroyed solar panels in Texas
On March 15, thousands of panels at a solar farm southwest of Houston, Texas, were damaged by a massive hail storm. A hail storm was observed, with hailstones the size of baseballs, the Houston Chronicle reported. The hailstorm passed over the solar farm, which generates 350 megawatts on 3,300 acres and supplies electricity to 62,000 people. houses.
A hailstone the size of a baseball can completely shatter the glass in solar panels.
A spokesman for Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), one of the two companies behind the solar farm, confirmed to Newsweek that a hailstorm damaged solar panels at the site.
Can severe damage to photovoltaic panels pose a threat to the environment or life?
Photovoltaic panels may contain toxic substances such as cadmium telluride and copper indium gallium diselenide, but in solar cells they occur in solid form, in a thin layer.
A CIP spokesperson confirmed to Newsweek that “the damaged silicon-based panels do not contain cadmium telluride and we have not identified any risk to the local community or the environment.”
Experts emphasize that solar panels have several protective layers that prevent exposure to the environment or life through contact with any substance as a result of, for example, damage.
Hazardous materials crews have not yet found any contamination from damaged panels from the solar farm.
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