While many Islanders have endured almost a fortnight of no power thanks to the wrath of Tropical Storm Fay and Hurricane Gonzalo, those living with solar power have largely been enjoying the luxury of hot running water, fully-charged batteries, and flushable toilets.

Hurricanes do pose a certain risk to solar panels, as demonstrated by the loss of 12 panels from King Edward VII Memorial Hospital during Gonzalo, but the anecdotal evidence to date suggests that the majority of the installations on the Island have remained unscathed.

Bermuda’s panels are generally designed to withstand winds ranging from 150mph up to as much as 230mph for more expensive systems.

Jay Pedro owns a solar-powered home with a backup battery system in Scott’s Hill, Warwick, and had a family staying at the property during hurricane Gonzalo.

“It’s very windy outside but you don’t lose power,” he said. “If Belco goes out, the only thing you can’t run is the AC because it draws too much power. My brother moved in for a month and lived without Belco even connected to the place. We also have agreements with Belco that if we generate more power than we consume, they will pay us.

“People get worried about the roof coming off because of the panels, I have never heard of anyone having that problem.”

The panels on Mr Pedro’s property were installed by Solar Bermuda which said there were “minimal loses”.

“Any loses we suffered have mostly been from impact,” Jamie Smith, president and owner of the company, said. “They haven’t disconnected and blown away, but some may have gotten smashed or broken. We have 200 systems out there and we have probably seen damage on three of them and we are about half way through contacting the client base.

“Of course there are risks, but we inform all our of clients to put them on their homeowners’ insurance policy and they can recover the costs if there’s an issue.

“The battery backup system leaves you with electricity, and you can run your essential services and lights. There are two electricity generating systems — one is grid-direct so it goes straight into the wires at Belco and the other is battery backup.

“That will charge your batteries up first, and they will be on standby, and the balance of the power after the batteries are full will export out to Belco, or into the house, if it needs it. The batteries are all recyclable.”

Some 22 solar electric panels were damaged of Bermuda Engineering Company’s 1,300 panels, representing just 1.6 per cent for the total. Half of those panels have already been replaced with the remainder due to be fixed by this week. None of the company’s water heating panels were damaged.

During Gonzalo, some 32,100 homes on the conventional electricity grid were left without power.

“Considering these were the first major hurricane events since solar energy has become mainstream in Bermuda, and that plenty of buildings have experienced major structural damage to their roofs/windows and even walls, we feel that the amount of damage seen to solar systems was relatively small,” Travis Burland, BEC’s director and chief engineer, said.

“The main difference between damage to solar systems, and other building components, is that solar is very easy to repair due to the modular nature of the systems.

“We have had some inquiries from clients who are interested in going ‘off grid’, however we usually advise that it is far cheaper to buy a generator to provide power for occasional events such as major hurricanes, relative to installing a battery system that is unnecessary for the 99.99 per cent of the time that Belco’s grid is operational.

“The main reason homes across the Island are switching to solar is that the electricity generated by solar panels is substantially cheaper than electricity generated using oil and solar represents a fantastic investment.”

According to William Madeiros, executive vice president of insurers Freisenbruch-Meyer, the company had not received any claims for solar panel damage since Fay.

“We have seen every single Fay site so I can say with some certainty that we’re not aware of any solar panel damage as a result of Fay and, to date, we have seen no Gonzalo panel damage,” he said.

“We have a very significant share of the local property market and I am very pleased, as a fan of alternative energy, that anecdotally the guys who are putting these things up on roofs are doing a good job.”