One of the least thought-about hazards of local weather change is the rising frequency of hailstorms and the scale and the impression of the items of ice they produce. This, in flip, threatens one of the crucial promising options to the local weather disaster: photo voltaic farms.
Within the final yr, the variety of hailstorms in Europe exceeded 10,000 and the scale of huge hailstones reported from Italy and Germany elevated to 10cm (4in) – sufficient to dent a automotive, smash greenhouses and break a photo voltaic panel. The frequency of storms and the scale of the hail is rising.
In Texas, the place hailstones come even greater, baseball-sized holes have been knocked in photo voltaic panels, inflicting large-scale injury.
Upkeep of photo voltaic panels is minimal, as they don’t have any transferring elements, however the specter of hail could trigger that to alter. Insurance coverage firms are ready to supply hail cowl to photo voltaic farms, however solely provided that the panels have a mechanism that may flip them a minimum of 70 levels to the bottom so hail will solely strike a glancing blow.
Some newer farms that had already deliberate a system to show the panels in direction of the solar because the day progresses are modifying their operation so panels might be rendered nearly upright if a hail warning is issued.
