When a baseball-sized hailstone slams into a solar panel at more than 90 mph, the result is not pretty. We saw this in March, when a hailstorm decimated parts of the 350-MW Fighting Jays solar project in southeast Texas. Images circulated on social media and in news coverage of thousands of panels pockmarked with white circles of broken glass. Right-wing outlets were eager to amplify what they saw as evidence of the unreliability of solar power.
When Beardsworth talks about module technology, he means that some solar panels are being built to be more resistant to damage from large hail. In addition to stronger panels, developers can buy products, like the ones sold by Nextracker, that tilt panels to angles that avoid direct hits. The use of stowing trackers got a test in 2022 when a hailstorm hit the Prospero 1 and Prospero 2 solar farms in West Texas, which implemented Nextracker equipment.