[LINK] Hail storms and solar panels

[Tom Worthington]

At 02:49 PM 1/03/2007, Stewart Fist wrote:
>... That enormous hail storm that hit the Australian National Uni, 
>is a good test.  Can one of the linkers from the ANU find-out and 
>tell us how well the solar panels survived. I would guess that the 
>campus is covered with panels. ...

Commercial panels are supposed to meet the British "iceball test" (BS 
EN 12975-2:2001) as part of the Australian Standard for Solar and 
heat pump water heaters (AS/NZS 2712:2002). The ANU PV/Trough Array 
was designed with "Impact resistance: sufficient to withstand hail" 
<http://solar.anu.edu.au/level_1/pubs/papers/PaperVC3_41.pdf>.

But I haven't seen what has happened to the campus. There are 
some  photos on Flickr at 
<http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=anu+hail&m=tags/>. Apparently my 
office was ankle deep in water, so I have been keeping out of the way 
of the recovery.

The ANU computer system continues to operate and I have suggested one 
of my colleagues go to one of the open building and use his wireless 
laptop from there, via the ANU's wireless Internet service. There are 
WiFi access points around the campus and in the student 
accommodation, for staff and student use.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml