NREL (National Renewable Energy Lab):
After severe weather events—like hail or major windstorms—fielded solar panels should be inspected for damage, usually with either complex electrical equipment or by removal for indoor lab testing. Often, these inspections reveal minimal damage but still require system downtime and high costs to confirm their health.
A new system, developed by National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) photovoltaic reliability researchers with input from industry partners, simplifies and streamlines this process by relying on photoluminescence—a fundamental property of the semiconductors in solar cells. The PLatypus device shines light on the solar cells, which then re-emit light back to the device’s cameras. Damaged cells will shine less brightly, quickly indicating the health of the panels.
An entire system can be checked at a fraction of the time and cost previously required—all without any disconnection of the system’s electronics. The PLatypus device is under development as part of the Durable Module Materials Consortium (DuraMAT), funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office and led by NREL.
Solar panels are built to be extremely resistant to the elements, but hit anything hard enough, and it will break. In this summer of extremes, we had an example of baseball sized hail hitting a solar field in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.
Even with buffeting like this, the panels remain largely intact, due to the tough coating of “encapsulent”, Ethylene Vinyl Acetate, the same stuff that keeps auto windshields from shattering in an accident.
Just an FYI, other kinds of power plants are also vulnerable to the type of storms we are seeing more frequently, for instance, the Duane Arnold Nuclear Plant in Iowa was shut down months early a few years ago after being damaged by a massive Derecho event.
Nuclear Engineering International:
The US Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Linn County, Iowa, will be decommissioned early as a result of damage by the recent derecho (violent storm).
The 601MWe boiling water reactor, which began commercial operation in 1975, was previously set to be decommissioned at the end of October.
NextEra Energy Resources said on 24 August that “After conducting a complete assessment of the damage caused by recent severe weather, NextEra Energy Resources has made the decision not to restart the reactor at Duane Arnold Energy Centre (DAEC).
“The strong storms that hit the area on 10 August caused extensive damage to Duane Arnold’s cooling towers, and our evaluation found that replacing those towers before the site’s previously-scheduled decommissioning on 30 October 2020, was not feasible,” it added.
Below, expert engineers spoke to me about the durability of modern solar panels, and end of life concerns.
I foresee an increase in adopting solar panel “package” standards, including mounting racks, standardized rail fittings for running cleaners (and these damage scanners) across them, etc. I would have said that standardization should be well under way, but I’ve been surprised to learn how many industrial components still use custom fittings for a lot of big projects.