Hail as a damage vector for renewable energy.

Abstract

Hundreds of thousands of wind turbines and billions of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels are operating worldwide. Reliability, power production and operations, and maintenance costs for these electricity generation sources depend on operating conditions, including severe meteorological events such as hail frequency and size. Information necessary to undertake cost-benefit analyses of hail damage mitigation options is lacking. Novel, robust, and transferable models are presented that quantitatively describe the geospatial and temporal variability of hail damage in terms that are directly applicable to the wind and solar industries. Results are illustrated for the continental US In the south-central US, where 44% of wind turbine assets are located, blade coatings are predicted to fail at least once during the 25-year lifetime due to precipitation-induced erosion, with hail contributing 38% of the damage on average. The southeast region (28% of solar PV) is predicted to experience ≥20 potentially damaging hail events per year.