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Wrenches,<br>
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. <br>
<div class="moz-forward-container">Allan, Sindelar Solar<br>
<br>
-------- Forwarded Message --------
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<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">Subject:
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<td>Big hailstorm in LC</td>
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<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">Date: </th>
<td>Tue, 6 Oct 2015 08:04:14 -0600</td>
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<br>
<div dir="ltr">Hi all,
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div>Cheers,</div>
<div>Westbrock<br clear="all">
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message
----------<span dir="ltr"></span><br>
Date: Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 7:19 PM<br>
Subject: Broken Panel<br>
<br>
Here is what the panel looks like! It is just like safety
glass, the entire panel is shattered.<br>
Bob<br>
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