VDE Americas Expands Global Hail Risk Intelligence for Solar Industry
VDE Americas, a global leader in technical advisory and catastrophic risk assessment services for the solar industry, has expanded its innovative hail risk assessment and mitigation services internationally. The company has built upon novel work by the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), ETH Zurich, and others to offer Hail Risk Intelligence free of population bias to nearly every location in the world. Jon Previtali, vice president of VDE Americas, is attending All Energy Australia to introduce these capabilities to solar and insurance industry stakeholders.
VDE Americas has been providing technical advisory and risk mitigation services to renewable energy stakeholders since 2021, facilitating billions of dollars of investment in renewable energy assets. Initially serving the most hail-exposed region in the world, the continental United States, the company has now expanded its service territory to support increased customer demand in Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and South Africa.
The company's Hail Risk Intelligence service offers location- and technology-specific financial hail risk exposure reports. It provides state-of-the-art hail severity and frequency forecasts to support engineered financial loss assessments and risk mitigation responses. VDE has developed data analysis and transposition tools capable of characterizing hailstorm frequency and severity anywhere in the world, making its services valuable for both solar and insurance industries.
VDE Americas' expansion of Hail Risk Intelligence services comes at a time when severe convective storms, which produce tornadoes, high winds, and damaging hail, account for tens of billions of U.S. dollars of insured losses worldwide each year. Despite accounting for less than 2% of solar project insurance claims by count, hail accounts for more than 50% of total financial losses, according to GCube, a specialty insurer. With Jon Previtali, vice president of VDE Americas, introducing these capabilities at All Energy Australia, the company aims to provide tailored risk assessments and mitigation strategies to support the growth of the renewable energy industry worldwide.
