Prue and Jamie Rogers moved from Brisbane to a rural property on Queensland’s Darling Downs a year ago to fulfil their dream of a peaceful life away from it all.<\/p>\n
“We wanted to be out here to be off the grid, not worry about bills, to live our life the best we could without forking out money all the time,” Ms Rogers said.<\/p>\n
Despite their best efforts, nature had other plans.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Prue and Jamie Rogers moved to the small town outside Toowoomba to live a quiet life off the grid. (ABC Southern Qld: Grace Nakamura)<\/p>\n
Giant hailstones from two destructive storm supercells in the south-east in early November smashed all 21 of their solar panels, which they were entirely reliant upon for power.<\/p>\n
“Everything in the house is connected through solar \u2014 we have no power through main sources,” Ms Rogers said.<\/p>\n
“It was literally the worst experience of my life. I’ve never seen hail so bad.”Loading…<\/p>\n
All five of their vehicles, including work cars, were damaged by the hail that fell on November 1.<\/p>\n
The couple estimates the damage bill will be in the six figures and, like other residents in the town of Pratten, 185 kilometres west of Brisbane, they do not have insurance.<\/p>\n
“It costs so much for insurance that you can’t even insure your place for these kinds of things,” Ms Rogers said.<\/p>\n
They have managed to negotiate a payment plan with their solar provider, which bumped the job of replacing the panels to the top of the queue.<\/p>\n
“We’re grateful for that \u2026 otherwise we would have had to wait until May next year \u2014 that’s how long they’re booked out to,” Ms Rogers said.<\/p>\n
Hailstorms more common<\/p>\n
Southern Queensland residents told the ABC the hail came “like bullets”, punching through windscreens and garden furniture and leaving deep dents in tin sheds.<\/p>\n
In Pratten, population 229, nearly every property reported damaged solar panels.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hailstones smashed through the windscreen of Prue and Jamie Rogers’ car. (ABC Southern Qld: Grace Nakamura)<\/p>\n
There have been 28,250 insurance claims lodged following the severe weather event in south-east Queensland, according to the Insurance Council of Australia.<\/p>\n
A little more than half the claims related to motor vehicles, 43 per cent were for homes, and the remainder were for commercial properties.<\/p>\n
There is no breakdown on the number of claims relating to solar panel damage.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Tim Raupach says infrastructure needs to be designed with extreme weather in mind. (Supplied: UNSW)<\/p>\n
University of New South Wales Institute for Climate Risk and Response researcher Tim Raupach said modelling showed severe hailstorms were likely to occur more frequently as the atmosphere got warmer.<\/p>\n
“In some cities such as Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, we did see really significant increases in future simulated hailstone sizes,” Dr Raupach said.<\/p>\n
“In places like Brisbane we actually saw increases in frequency in hailstorms but not a significant change in hailstone sizes.<\/p>\n
“We should be keeping in mind, as we’re building our cities, that we should be resilient to these kinds of threats.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The giant hail wreaked havoc in Pratten. (Supplied: Glen and Jo Potter)<\/p>\n
How resilient are solar panels?<\/p>\n
Solar panels must meet a national minimum standard that requires them to withstand the impact of a 2.5 centimetre hailstone.<\/p>\n
The Darling Downs recently recorded hailstones with a diameter of 9cm.<\/p>\n
Standards Australia chief development officer Adam Stingemore said Australia had adopted the international standard, which also allowed for testing of hail up to 7.5cm.<\/p>\n
“A solar panel on a roof has to deal with all sorts of weather \u2014 sun, wind, hail, rain \u2026 they’re made to standards that give them a design life in most parts of between 20 and 25 years,” he said.<\/p>\n
“However, there are a lot of products coming onto the market now that go above the minimum standard to provide more hail protection.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Insurers recommend solar systems be switched off during a storm. (Reuters: Tim Wimborne\/file photo)<\/p>\n
Mr Stingemore said changing the minimum requirement of hail resilience would need to be coordinated between Standards Australia, governments, communities and industry.<\/p>\n
“Standards revisions generally run between three to five years at the international level and are very much based on data,” he said.<\/p>\n
“As conditions change, the standards change to meet those conditions.”<\/p>\n
Ms Rogers said she and her husband were counting their blessings, despite the damage.<\/p>\n
“We’re one of the lucky ones that have been able to get our panels put back on,” she said, adding that she still thought solar panels were the best way to go.<\/p>\n
But if there are more severe hailstorms, they have concerns about how they will keep their panels safe.<\/p>\n
“We don’t have the money to pay for [solar repairs],” Mr Rogers said.<\/p>\n
For now, they say they will be “soldiering on” and keeping one eye on the sky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prue and Jamie Rogers moved from Brisbane to a rural property on Queensland’s Darling Downs a year ago…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,162407,162408,150594,162409,162406,162410,162405,162411,162412],"class_list":["post-280462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-can-solar-panels-withstand-hail","tag-extreme-weather-queensland","tag-giant-hail","tag-giant-hail-pratten","tag-how-strong-are-solar-panels","tag-pratten-storm-damage","tag-solar-panel-damage","tag-solar-panel-repairs","tag-solar-system-damage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}