Hail Resiliency Curve Test

HRC

Designed by VDE Americas and RETC in collaboration with glass reliability engineering and product testing expert Central Tension, the Hail Resiliency Curve Test uses a calibrated air cannon to shoot progressively larger freezer ice balls, a laboratory proxy for naturally occurring hail, at increasingly higher speeds and impact energies until glass breakage occurs. Importantly, the Weibull-based test-to-failure protocol provides a robust statistical representation of what happens during real-world hailstorms. The resulting hail resiliency curve provides clients with unprecedented visibility into solar panel performance in locations with high hail risk. This test allows module companies to optimize hail-hardened PV module designs. Tracker companies can also use the program to understand the efficacy of defensive hail stow protocols. The test also provides downstream stakeholders with reliable risk assessment data, allowing technical advisers and insurers to understand the relationship between glass fracture and kinetic impact energy as a continuous probability distribution function.