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The photo voltaic business must confront the escalating frequency and severity of hailstorms with pragmatic, low-cost options, in accordance with a brand new report printed by GCube Insurance coverage.
The report “Hail No! Defending Solar from nature’s cold assault” is predicated on knowledge collected by GCube over the previous 5 years. It reveals that hail claims now common round $58.4 million per declare and account for 54.21% of incurred prices of complete photo voltaic loss claims being attributable to hail. That is creating a spot between the insurance coverage necessities for photo voltaic tasks and what’s accessible out there, resulting in venture delays and cancelations.
The report identifies a number of key components contributing to photo voltaic venture vulnerability, together with insufficient hail threat fashions, ineffective mitigation methods, restricted and expensive insurance coverage protection, and an unsure funding panorama. It additionally highlights how photo voltaic producers, of their pursuit of lowering the levelized value of electrical energy (LCOE), have launched bigger photo voltaic panels with thinner, extra fragile glass and have chosen places extra vulnerable to hail threat, threatening the monetary viability of future tasks.
“The photo voltaic sector performs a vital position within the world vitality transition. Given its comparatively low prices for manufacture and set up, it’s the most effective clear energy know-how for driving decarbonization,” mentioned Fraser McLachlan, CEO of GCube Insurance coverage. “Nonetheless, the results of hail injury threat undermining the safety of solar energy as an outstanding clear vitality resolution. We due to this fact have an overriding crucial to develop options to this problem and restore our capacity as insurers to offer the sector with long run threat underwriting.”
To assist this objective, GCube’s report places ahead two patented applied sciences developed by Photo voltaic Defender Applied Sciences, which supply easy and efficient options to the issue of hail threat.
The primary is the Hail Strike Defender, a low-cost, capex-neutral catchment internet that protects single-axis tracked photo voltaic installations whereas sustaining optimum vitality output — a key differentiator that units the answer aside from current safety mechanisms out there. The second resolution, Photo Voltaic Protect, is designed to guard fixed-tilt photo voltaic panels which might be put in on rooftops and gives a panel face protector that deflects the impression of hailstones.
Each Photo voltaic Defender Applied sciences present substantial safety of modules in opposition to hail of as much as 250 joules.
“We are able to’t transfer rapidly sufficient as the power of insurers to cowl photo voltaic’s world progress turns into more and more constrained,” mentioned McLachlan. “Due to this fact, the unity of producers, builders, operators and insurers will probably be an important a part of softening the widening hole in insurance coverage protection. The success of the photo voltaic sector because it navigates hail dangers is hinged on quick motion and innovation to make sure a cleaner, extra sustainable future powered by photo voltaic vitality.”
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