Queensland may be in the midst of a state election, but mother nature cares not. This afternoon a severe storm impacted part of the state, which is now impacting the vote-counting in 20 electorates.
Election aside, one big impact on home owners is damage to their solar panels. Australia is often bathed in sunlight and Queensland is known as the sunshine state.
With more than 2.5 Million Australian homes now having solar panels on their roof, Queensland makes up a significant percentage of the national numbers.
While the solar panel manufacturers build panels to withstand normal weather like rain, hail and even snow, what they couldn’t engineer for, is hail stones the size of tennis balls.
Here’s some examples below, shared on Social Media that will ultimately result in insurance claims to have them replaced.
The following photos were shared on the Solar Q&A Aus/NZ Facebook Group. These photos graphically demonstrate the damage to the panels. Unfortunately, almost every panel in these photos has been damaged and will need to be replaced. This could be $5 – $10,000 worth of damage per property and that’s before any impacted cars.
Here’s an example of what Queensland’s East Coast faced this afternoon. For those not familiar with the radar loop, red is bad, black is thankfully rare, but extremely damaging through high-speed wind and hailstones.
If your solar was impacted by the storm, please leave a comment below.
