IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v15y2023i22p16044-d1282200.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effects of Extreme Weather Conditions on PV Systems

Author

Listed:
  • Mladen Bošnjaković

    (Technical Department, University of Slavonski Brod, Trg Ivane Brlić Mažuranić 2, 35000 Slavonski Brod, Croatia)

  • Marinko Stojkov

    (Mechanical Engineering Faculty, University of Slavonski Brod, Trg Ivane Brlić Mažuranić 2, 35000 Slavonski Brod, Croatia)

  • Marko Katinić

    (Mechanical Engineering Faculty, University of Slavonski Brod, Trg Ivane Brlić Mažuranić 2, 35000 Slavonski Brod, Croatia)

  • Ivica Lacković

    (Technical Department, University of Slavonski Brod, Trg Ivane Brlić Mažuranić 2, 35000 Slavonski Brod, Croatia)

Abstract

We are witnessing significant climatic changes and increasingly frequent extreme weather conditions affecting every part of the globe. In order to reduce and stop these unfavourable climate changes, there has been a shift to the use of renewables, and in this sense, a significant contribution of the photovoltaic (PV) power plant is planned. This paper analyses the safety, reliability, and resilience of PV systems to extreme weather conditions such as wind storms, hail, lightning, high temperatures, fire, and floods. In addition to using available information from the literature, temperature measurements were also carried out on the rooftop PV power plant in Slavonski Brod, as well as a numerical stress analysis at extreme wind speeds using Ansys software. The results of the analysis show that existing PV systems are very resilient to extreme weather conditions. Utility-scale PV systems can usually withstand wind speeds of up to 50 m/s without any problems, and only at higher speeds do local stresses occur in certain parts of the structure that are higher than permissible. Resistance to hail is also very high, and manufacturers guarantee resistance to hail up to 25 mm in size. At high air temperatures, the temperature of the panel frame can reach about 70 °C, the panel temperature up to 85 °C, and the temperature of the cable insulation over 60 °C, as measurements have shown. Such high temperatures lead to a drop in electricity production up to 30% but do not pose a fire hazard to the cables and the roof if the roof insulation is conducted correctly. Forest fires do not usually pose a direct threat to PV systems, but the smoke that spreads over a large area reduces the solar radiation reaching the PV panel. It can also cause an unfavourable “wiggle effect”. Lightning strikes to a PV panel are not common, although they are possible. With built-in safeguards, no major damage should occur. Flooding is always a possibility, but with properly designed drainage systems, the damage is minimal in most cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Mladen Bošnjaković & Marinko Stojkov & Marko Katinić & Ivica Lacković, 2023. "Effects of Extreme Weather Conditions on PV Systems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(22), pages 1-22, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:22:p:16044-:d:1282200
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/22/16044/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/22/16044/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yılmaz, Kutay & Dinçer, Ali Ersin & Ayhan, Elif N., 2023. "Exploring flood and erosion risk indices for optimal solar PV site selection and assessing the influence of topographic resolution," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    2. Mayer, Martin János & Gróf, Gyula, 2021. "Extensive comparison of physical models for photovoltaic power forecasting," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 283(C).
    3. Mladen Bošnjaković & Robert Santa & Zoran Crnac & Tomislav Bošnjaković, 2023. "Environmental Impact of PV Power Systems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(15), pages 1-26, August.
    4. Sarah Feron & Raúl R. Cordero & Alessandro Damiani & Robert B. Jackson, 2021. "Climate change extremes and photovoltaic power output," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 4(3), pages 270-276, March.
    5. Gilletly, Samuel D. & Jackson, Nicole D. & Staid, Andrea, 2023. "Evaluating the impact of wildfire smoke on solar photovoltaic production," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 348(C).
    6. Gómez-Amo, J.L. & Freile-Aranda, M.D. & Camarasa, J. & Estellés, V. & Utrillas, M.P. & Martínez-Lozano, J.A., 2019. "Empirical estimates of the radiative impact of an unusually extreme dust and wildfire episode on the performance of a photovoltaic plant in Western Mediterranean," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 235(C), pages 1226-1234.
    7. Jackson, Nicole D. & Gunda, Thushara, 2021. "Evaluation of extreme weather impacts on utility-scale photovoltaic plant performance in the United States," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 302(C).
    8. Mireille B. Tadie Fogaing & Arman Hemmati & Carlos F. Lange & Brian A. Fleck, 2019. "Performance of Turbulence Models in Simulating Wind Loads on Photovoltaics Modules," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-16, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Youssef Kassem & Hüseyin Gökçekuş & Aşkın Kiraz & Abdalla Hamada Abdelnaby Abdelnaby, 2025. "Integrating Rainwater Harvesting and Solar Energy Systems for Sustainable Water and Energy Management in Low Rainfall Agricultural Region: A Case Study from Gönyeli, Northern Cyprus," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(18), pages 1-42, September.
    2. Samantha M. Treacy & Alexandra B. Moura, 2025. "The effects and financial impacts of wildfire smoke on solar photovoltaic power production in Alberta, Canada," Working Papers REM 2025/0373, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zifan Huang & Zexia Duan & Yichi Zhang & Tianbo Ji, 2024. "Response of Sustainable Solar Photovoltaic Power Output to Summer Heatwave Events in Northern China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(12), pages 1-28, June.
    2. Gilletly, Samuel D. & Jackson, Nicole D. & Staid, Andrea, 2023. "Evaluating the impact of wildfire smoke on solar photovoltaic production," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 348(C).
    3. Samantha M. Treacy & Alexandra B. Moura, 2025. "The effects and financial impacts of wildfire smoke on solar photovoltaic power production in Alberta, Canada," Working Papers REM 2025/0373, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa.
    4. Guo, Jingxian & Li, Runkui & Cai, Panli & Xiao, Zhen & Fu, Haiyu & Guo, Tongze & Wang, Tianyi & Zhang, Xiaoping & Wang, Jiancheng & Song, Xianfeng, 2024. "Risk in solar energy: Spatio-temporal instability and extreme low-light events in China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 359(C).
    5. Mayer, Martin János & Yang, Dazhi & Szintai, Balázs, 2023. "Comparing global and regional downscaled NWP models for irradiance and photovoltaic power forecasting: ECMWF versus AROME," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 352(C).
    6. Mohamed Massaoudi & Ines Chihi & Lilia Sidhom & Mohamed Trabelsi & Shady S. Refaat & Fakhreddine S. Oueslati, 2021. "Enhanced Random Forest Model for Robust Short-Term Photovoltaic Power Forecasting Using Weather Measurements," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(13), pages 1-20, July.
    7. Mayer, Martin János & Yang, Dazhi, 2023. "Calibration of deterministic NWP forecasts and its impact on verification," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 981-991.
    8. Yang, Yanru & Liu, Yu & Zhang, Yihang & Shu, Shaolong & Zheng, Junsheng, 2025. "DEST-GNN: A double-explored spatio-temporal graph neural network for multi-site intra-hour PV power forecasting," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 378(PA).
    9. Sánchez-Pozo, Nadia N. & Vanem, Erik & Bloomfield, Hannah & Aizpurua, Jose I., 2025. "A probabilistic risk assessment framework for the impact assessment of extreme events on renewable power plant components," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 240(C).
    10. Wang, Yong & Yang, Zhongsen & Zhou, Ying & Liu, Hao & Yang, Rui & Sun, Lang & Sapnken, Flavian Emmanuel & Narayanan, Govindasami, 2025. "A novel structure adaptive new information priority grey Bernoulli model and its application in China's renewable energy production," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(C).
    11. Shasha Chai & Fanjie Kong & Yu Liu & Mengyin Liang & Quanfeng Liu, 2024. "Photovoltaic Solar Farms Site Selection through “Policy Constraints–Construction Suitability”: A Case Study of Qilian County, Qinghai," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-20, September.
    12. Lingling Hu & Junming Zhou & Feng Jiang & Guangming Xie & Jie Hu & Qinglie Mo, 2023. "Research on Optimization of Valley-Filling Charging for Vehicle Network System Based on Multi-Objective Optimization," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(1), pages 1-25, December.
    13. Grzegorz Woroniak & Joanna Piotrowska-Woroniak & Anna Woroniak & Edyta Owczarek & Krystyna Giza, 2024. "Analysis of the Hybrid Power-Heating System in a Single-Family Building, along with Ecological Aspects of the Operation," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(11), pages 1-24, May.
    14. Conceição, Ricardo & González-Aguilar, José & Merrouni, Ahmed Alami & Romero, Manuel, 2022. "Soiling effect in solar energy conversion systems: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    15. Wang, Guotao & Liao, Qi & Wang, Chang & Liang, Yongtu & Zhang, Haoran, 2022. "Multiperiod optimal planning of biofuel refueling stations: A bi-level game-theoretic approach," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 1152-1165.
    16. Huang, Yan & Ju, Yuntao & Ma, Kang & Short, Michael & Chen, Tao & Zhang, Ruosi & Lin, Yi, 2022. "Three-phase optimal power flow for networked microgrids based on semidefinite programming convex relaxation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 305(C).
    17. Mayer, Martin János & Yang, Dazhi, 2023. "Pairing ensemble numerical weather prediction with ensemble physical model chain for probabilistic photovoltaic power forecasting," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    18. Ian B. Benitez & Jessa A. Ibañez & Cenon III D. Lumabad & Jayson M. Cañete & Jeark A. Principe, 2023. "Day-Ahead Hourly Solar Photovoltaic Output Forecasting Using SARIMAX, Long Short-Term Memory, and Extreme Gradient Boosting: Case of the Philippines," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(23), pages 1-21, November.
    19. Louzazni, Mohamed & Al-Dahidi, Sameer, 2021. "Approximation of photovoltaic characteristics curves using Bézier Curve," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 715-732.
    20. Tang, Baojun & Wu, Yun & Yu, Biying & Harmsen, Robert & Hu, Jing & Crijns-Graus, Wina & Wei, Yi-Ming, 2025. "Integrating climate change impacts into power system planning for achieving carbon neutrality in China," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 248-261.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:22:p:16044-:d:1282200. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.