Originally developed to de-risk capital investments in utility-scale solar, VDE Hail Risk Intelligence provides state-of-the-art hail severity and frequency forecasts to support engineered financial loss assessments and risk mitigation responses. Because severe hail hotspots occur globally, VDE Americas leveraged its longstanding collaboration with Dr. John Allen, a professor of meteorology at Central Michigan University, to develop state-of-the-art data analysis and transposition tools capable of characterizing hailstorm frequency and severity anywhere in the world, the results of which can be applied to any industry susceptible to hail damage.
“Though severe hail is often associated with the Great Plains of the United States, hail occurs regularly on every continent except Antarctica,” explained Dr. Allen, co-leader for Project ICECHIP, the largest-ever hail-focused field campaign and research initiative funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. “Hail can form in any location that experiences severe thunderstorms. In Australia, as an example, where I am from originally, severe hail events are most frequent on the central east coast and nearby inland, from north of Brisbane to south of Sydney. This is a region where severe hail events are coincident with utility-scale solar development activities.”
The limited availability and quality of radar data is a key challenge in assessing hail risk outside the United States; this is especially true of many locations where solar development occurs. To solve this blind spot, VDE Americas has built upon novel work by the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), ETH Zurich, and others. By using a combination of human expertise and a proprietary meteorological model that pairs rich radar and ground-based hail data from the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) with high-quality atmospheric data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), VDE is now able to offer Hail Risk Intelligence free of population bias to nearly every location in the world.
“Though large-diameter hail is inevitable in some parts of the world, large solar project losses are not,” noted Brian Grenko, president and CEO of VDE Americas. “Our hail products and services have consistently demonstrated that project stakeholders can limit catastrophic damage and financial loss via better technical literacy, due diligence, and risk mitigation practices.”
“Today’s solar farms are tomorrow’s critical power generation assets,” said Ansgar Hinz, CEO of the VDE Group. “For a worthwhile future, solar assets and portfolios must operate safely, sustainably, and reliably under their expected use conditions. Leveraging the VDE Group’s strong international network, we are excited to offer these financial hail risk assessments and consulting services to global markets.”
To kick off product internationalization, Jon Previtali, vice president of VDE Americas, is attending All Energy Australia, which takes place 29–30 October 2025 in Melbourne, to introduce VDE’s Hail Risk Intelligence capabilities to solar and insurance industry stakeholders at the southern hemisphere’s largest clean energy event. "Based on its solar development trends and severe convective storm activity, Australia represents an ideal market for our catastrophic risk assessment and loss prevention services,” said Previtali.
