New research from the solar technology company questions established practices for protecting solar trackers from hail damage, potentially reshaping industry standards for storm mitigation strategies worldwide.
NORWALK, Conn., Jan. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — GameChange Solar (GCS), a leading global supplier of single axis solar trackers announced the release of an updated version of its white paper “Reliable Hail Mitigation: Technical and Economic Optimization for Solar Trackers”. The white paper provides a comprehensive overview of hail mitigation, including discussions on appropriate triggers for hail stow, hail stow tilt angles, wind coincident with hail, and a case study identifying the lowest LCOE based on different hail mitigation approaches.
The updated edition incorporates the results of a new study by CPP Wind Engineering Consultants regarding wind direction during hail events. The CPP study, which is summarized in the memo “Wind directionality during hail events” analyzes the wind direction within +/- 30 minutes of 137 hail events at a site in East Texas, USA and 48 hail events at a separate site in Queensland, Australia. CPP calculated that the vast majority of storms with hail, 75% or more, produce winds from both east as well as west sectors. The study concluded: “The storm direction of travel or the wind direction at ground level prior to the onset of hail are not reliable predictors of the hail direction as conditions change rapidly.”
Based on this analysis, GameChange recommends that owners purchase trackers that are designed for wind loads acting on both the front face and rear side of the module. Furthermore, owners and insurers cannot assume that the modules are always facing away from the wind during a hail event, even for trackers that are able to stow to either the east or west on a storm-by-storm basis.
“We have a concern that some tracker OEMs in the industry are encouraging solar asset owners to put too much emphasis on the direction a tracker stows during a hail event,” explains Scott Van Pelt, Chief Engineer at GameChange. “Our understanding, based on conversations with CPP and multiple insurers, is that it is far more important that the tracker be rotated to a steep tilt angle of at least 60 degrees and that the system be regularly tested to ensure the trackers reliably rotate to stow when there is a chance of hail in the forecast.”
The white paper is available upon request from GameChange’s website and was discussed at the Solar Insights event hosted by GameChange Solar in New York City last month.
For more information, visit www.gamechangesolar.com
