What happens to solar panels in a hurricane

What happens to solar panels in a hurricane?

Usually less than people picture. A module is tempered glass over an aluminum frame, tested for wind uplift and impact, and permitted to the wind speed your county requires. When a rooftop system does fail in a storm, the glass is rarely the first thing to go. The attachment goes first: clamps, rails, flashing, and the fasteners holding the whole assembly to the deck.

That ordering matters more than it sounds. A module that stays bolted down survives. A module that works loose at 110 mph becomes a four-foot sheet of glass moving through a neighborhood, and it takes the next few panels with it on the way out. Which is why the good Florida crews obsess over clamps, rail spans and flashing detail, and why the brand on the back of the panel is close to the least interesting line on your quote.

So the question to ask is narrower than the one people usually ask. Was this system engineered, permitted and inspected for the wind speed at your address? And will the company that did the work still answer the phone the week after landfall? That second one thins the field faster than the first.

Do solar panels make roof damage worse?

By themselves, no. Panels add weight the roof structure has to carry and penetrations the flashing has to seal. Both are ordinary engineering problems with ordinary answers. The true version is duller than the scare version: a careful install on a sound roof is not your weak link, and a careful install on a twenty-two-year-old roof still has a twenty-two-year-old roof underneath it.

Which is why the advice runs the other way round from what a salesperson wants to say. If the roof is close to the end of its life, replace it first, then put anything on it. We tell people this and lose deals over it, because a roof replaced under panels costs more than a roof replaced bare, and because a storm does not care which order you did things in.

Will the panels keep my lights on during the outage?

No, and this is the single most common surprise in the category. A grid-tied system is required to shut down when the utility goes down. The rule exists so a line crew is never working on a wire your roof is quietly energizing. Without a battery and the switching gear to run separated from the grid, your panels sit idle in bright sunshine while the street stays dark.

People find this out on day two of an outage, standing in the yard looking at their own roof. Interconnection rules from theFlorida Public Service Commissionare where the requirement comes from, and every compliant system in the state follows it, whether you bought it, financed it, leased it or subscribed to it.

Storage is the part that changes the answer, and it is offered in Florida, Texas, and Illinois. What it powers and for how long depends on the battery and on what you ask it to run, so get that in writing on your own quote rather than from a brochure. Start athow batteries fit the subscription.

One safety note that costs nothing to remember. Panels can still be live in daylight after a storm even with the grid down. Do not climb up to look at a damaged array, do not pull at a loose wire, and call the utility and whoever owns the system instead.

Who pays when a hurricane damages the panels?

Whoever owns them. That sounds glib and it is the entire answer, which is why nobody puts it in the brochure. Own the system outright or finance it, and storm damage is your claim against your own policy. Let a third party own it, and the answer lives in a clause you signed. Those clauses differ a great deal more than the sales pitches do.

That last row is the honest reason this structure suits hurricane country, and it is worth being precise about what it does and does not do. It reassigns the equipment risk. It does nothing for your roof, your windows or your fence. Read the insurance and casualty language in the agreement in front of you and make the salesperson point at it, including ours.

What does a hurricane deductible have to do with panels you own?

Everything, and homeowners routinely miss it. A Florida residential policy carries a separate hurricane deductible set out inFla. Stat. 627.701, and the percentage options are figured against your dwelling limit rather than the size of the loss. It is a much bigger number than the deductible you are used to.

Run it. On a $400,000 dwelling limit, a 2% hurricane deductible is $8,000 that you pay before the insurer pays anything. If the storm took the roof as well, that deductible was going to be spent anyway and the panels ride along on the same claim. If the storm took only the array, you are looking at a repair that may sit entirely underneath your own deductible, which means the policy you have been paying for does nothing for you.

There is a second cost nobody quotes you, which is what a claim does at renewal in a market this tight. TheFlorida Office of Insurance Regulationis where you check a carrier. Talk to yours before you put equipment on the roof, not after, and ask two questions in writing: is the array covered under the dwelling, and does having it change anything at renewal.

What should you check before the season, not during it?

There are six things worth knowing, and every one of them is easier to find out in February than in August. Most homeowners with solar cannot answer half of them. That is fine right up until the day it is not, so write the answers down somewhere that is not the roof.

• The permit and the wind-load documents for your specific install. Your county keeps a copy even if you cannot find yours.
• Who insures the equipment. Take that from the agreement, not from memory.
• Your hurricane deductible in dollars, not in percent.
• The number you call when panels are damaged, and whether anyone there picks up in the week after a storm.
• How old the roof under the array is. That is the real clock.
• Whether you have storage, and what it runs if the grid is down for four days.

If the system is provider owned, most of that list is answered by the same sentence: the company that owns it insures it, maintains it and replaces it. That is the point of the structure. It is also why the agreement is the document to read, rather than the marketing page.

Who shouldn't put solar on a Florida roof right now?

Anyone whose roof needs replacing. Do the roof first, every time. Beyond that the list is the same one we run everywhere: owners who are confident they are staying twenty years and want to own the asset outright, people who can pay cash and want the lowest lifetime cost, heavy shade or a bad roof plane, and anyone who would feel a new monthly obligation.

Also worth saying plainly, because it is the opposite of a sales point: if you want the generator experience, panels alone are not it. A system without storage goes quiet with everybody else's. Decide what you are buying before you sign for it.

Get your number

The term, stated the long way, because half of it is not the whole of it: a 36-month commitment inside a 10-year agreement, cancelable any time after month 36 with no fee, at a fixed 1.9% annual increase. No lien on the house. The provider owns, insures and maintains the system, and removes it at no cost at the end.

Run your bill through the estimator. It takes about a minute and a real person follows up with figures for your own roof. Or readhow the model works in Florida first, which covers the money side that this page does not.