Electroluminescence Analysis and Grading of Hail Damaged Solar Panels
Andrew M. Gabor, Philip J. Knodle, Maurice Covino, Joseph Fioresi, Dylan J. Colvin, Kristopher O. Davis
Abstract
We analyzed more than 4000 electroluminescence images of hail damaged solar panels from a cluster of houses in Texas. We enhanced the images for ease of analysis and classified the defects within each solar cell into categories of glass breakage, installer damage, inactive substrings, crack severity, interconnect wire problems, and whether the damage was likely caused by hail. From these statistics, we quantified each panel into five levels of hail damage for insurance claims, and four levels of overall quality for potential resale pricing. We share here some statistics regarding the defects with the hope that the data is useful to others attempting to predict the invisible damage to systems based just on the easily observable glass breakage statistics.