UK-headquartered risk analysis firm Renew Risk has launched a “first-of-its-kind” model to forecast and assess the impacts of thunderstorms on utility-scale solar projects in the US.
Renew Risk claims that its ‘US SCS Model’ is the first catastrophe model built specifically to model the impacts of convective storms, more commonly known as thunderstorms, on solar projects. The company says that the model has an “asset-first approach”, which incorporates forecasts based on the impacts of a storm on business and insurance value, and uses machine learning in modelling thunderstorms and their scales, as part of an approach developed in tandem with weather forecasting service Vāyuh.ai.
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The model will also assess the “interconnected dynamics” of natural catastrophe forecasting, as Renew Risk puts it, by assessing the impacts of hail, tornadoes and wind in conjunction with thunderstorm forecasts, and reviewing components of solar projects, such as lass thickness and stow angle, as part of the same assessment.
While the majority of natural catastrophe forecasting has focused around hail in the US—climate insurance provider kWh Analytics estimated last year that hail accounted for 73% of financial losses for US solar PV projects, despite accounting for just 6% of the total number of loss incidents—Renew Risk CEO Dr Joshua Macabuag argues that thunderstorms should also be considered significant risks.
“Historically, risk management has focused on rarer but catastrophic events such as hurricanes and earthquakes,” said Macabuag. “However, high-frequency, highly localised severe convective storms are now the primary loss driver in the US, accounting for 51% of natural catastrophe related losses in 2025—totalling US$46 billion.”
Earlier this year, kWh Analytics CEO Jason Kaminsky told PV Tech Premium that there is “more capital available for risk and risk exposure” in US renewables at present, perhaps suggesting that US investors have recalibrated their expectations surrounding climate risk, and that more investors are keen to put money into the sector, regardless of the damage to projects that extreme weather can cause. Renew Risk head of solar David Vickery added that his company’s approach has also focused on “highly asset-specific” forecasting in this space.
“By taking an asset-first approach to model development and partnering with best-in-class organisations, we have developed a technically robust, highly asset-specific view of SCS risk that captures the unique risk drivers of utility scale solar farms,” said Vickery.
