Solar insurance is one of those topics that receives ten minutes at project stage and considerable attention after a hailstorm. The gaps are predictable and mostly closable in advance.
This is the most common failure, and it is entirely avoidable. Adding a substantial electrical installation to your roof is a material change to the risk. Not disclosing it can affect not just solar claims but your building cover generally.
Notify the insurer at design stage, not after commissioning. Some will have requirements – specific fire detection, DC isolation arrangements, spacing from roof edges, particular certification – that are far cheaper to design in than to retrofit.
The array itself. Some policies treat rooftop plant as an addition requiring specific scheduling rather than as part of the building. If it is not scheduled with a stated value, it may not be covered.
Business interruption from lost generation. Standard BI covers interruption to your business. If your business is manufacturing, losing solar output is a cost increase, not an interruption – and may fall outside the policy. Where solar materially offsets your energy cost, consider whether lost generation needs explicit cover.
Consequential damage during installation. Roof damage caused by the installation contractor should sit with their liability cover. Verify the contractor's insurance limits are proportionate to your building's value, not to their contract value. A small contractor with modest limits working on a large facility is a genuine exposure.
Damage to the roof covering caused by the array. Wind uplift transferring load, ponding altered by racking, abrasion from a poorly fixed cable. Whether this falls under building cover, contractor liability, or nothing at all depends on wording and cause.
Hail. The dominant cause of significant solar losses in exposed regions. Modules are tested to defined impact standards, but severe hail exceeds those. If you are in a hail-prone area, confirm the deductible structure – percentage-of-value deductibles on hail are common and can be large.
Wind. Particularly for ballasted systems, where uplift resistance depends on design assumptions. A wind event exceeding design conditions can displace an array, and the resulting damage to the roof and surrounding property usually dwarfs the array value.
Fire. DC arc faults are the characteristic solar fire risk. Insurers increasingly ask about arc fault detection, DC isolation and inspection regimes. Being able to demonstrate a thermal inspection programme helps at renewal.
Theft. Modules and cabling on accessible sites. Copper cable theft in particular has periodic waves.
What you want to have already, before anything happens:
Claims involving performance degradation rather than obvious physical destruction turn almost entirely on baseline evidence. A plant with no commissioning data and no monitoring history is difficult to make a subtle claim on, whatever the policy says.
Hail can cause microcracking that is invisible from the ground and produces no immediate output loss, then degrades over the following years. If the claim window has closed by the time output falls, that damage becomes yours.
After any significant hail or wind event, a thermal or electroluminescence survey is worth the cost. It either finds damage while it is still claimable, or it documents that there was none – both useful outcomes.