[RE-wrenches] Hailstorm damage

Jason Szumlanski jason at floridasolardesigngroup.com
Fri Oct 9 05:09:17 PDT 2015


Not to hijack the thread, but the timing is perfect for another related
question I had. A client approached me about putting solar panels on a golf
course maintenance building. The pitch is 2 in 12 and the location is
supposedly not in the typical direction/are where golf balls are likely to
be hit (most likely because I don't have a membership there). The question
will naturally come up about golf ball strikes. We have several systems
along fairways on residences and have not had any reported issues. Does
anyone else have systems in the cross-hairs of errant golf balls? If so,
any feedback on resistance to strikes?

​Jason Szumlanski​
​​Florida Solar Design Group​


On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 1:47 AM, Allan Sindelar <allan at sindelarsolar.com>
wrote:

> Wrenches,
> From time to time I see posts about hail damage. The message below was
> sent internally among Positive Energy's three offices, and I thought worth
> sharing here.
> Allan, Sindelar Solar
>
> -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Big hailstorm in LC Date: Tue,
> 6 Oct 2015 08:04:14 -0600
> Hi all,
> We had a big hail storm in Las Cruces on Saturday.  Because so many
> potential clients ask about how solar panels hold up to hail, I thought
> that I would share a bit of what we found.
>
> The hail that was falling was about golf ball sized.  I have seen a
> picture of a hailstone next to a tape measure that was about an inch and a
> half in diameter.  On the install that we started yesterday, all of the
> customer's skylights (about 6) were busted out; not just cracked, but with
> big holes punched through them.  Several of our clients called to tell us
> that their skylights were destroyed, but their solar panels were
> undamaged.  We went up onto roofs for four of our clients that are out of
> town and found no damage to the PV arrays.
>
> We have only one report of a damaged panel, which you can see in the
> attached photos.  This was a unique installation, because the modules are
> mounted flat on a nominally flat roof, so they have about two degrees of
> pitch.  That means that the hailstones hit almost perpendicular, so with
> more force.  Even at this installation, only one 1 out of 15 modules was
> damaged.  This is a Suntech module.
>
> All in all, our modules fared well.  To my knowledge, this is only the
> second time that a module installed by Positive Energy has been damaged by
> hail.  The first time was in Taos a few years ago.
> Cheers,
> Westbrock
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 7:19 PM
> Subject: Broken Panel
>
> Here is what the panel looks like! It is just like safety glass, the
> entire panel is shattered.
> Bob
>
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