It is truly impressive to see how far solar energy has come in the last few years. What’s less inspiring is the growing rash of solar panel theft (as well as the theft of other solar farm equipment) that is hitching a ride on solar power’s growing success.
Although solar panels have become more affordable and efficient, they still carry a significant price tag. Power companies, farmers, home owners, and others who purchase and install solar panels typically do so as a long-term investment. Typically, solar panel payback time can take anywhere from 5 to 15 years, assuming the panel’s power flow is uninterrupted.
Thieves don’t have to wait so long. They only have to wait long enough to find a buyer for the stolen panels to walk away with a profit of hundreds or thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, the original purchaser’s investment has gone down the drain. Insured customers can get their solar panels replaced, but will pay higher insurance premiums as long as theft continues.
It’s not just about the money though.
As solar power becomes more and more relied upon, contributing billions of kilowatt hours (kWh) to individual homes as well as to the nation’s electrical grid, we are becoming more and more dependent on solar power to warm our homes, run our businesses, and keep our community infrastructures running. In the future, solar panel theft and vandalism could jeopardize the affordability of power for thousands of people or, worse, trigger blackouts with devastating consequences.
If solar power is to continue to grow and meet its full potential, solar panels will need to be protected.
Solar panels on residential rooftops will need to be installed and monitored in such a way as makes them difficult to steal. Afterall, hiding them isn’t really an option.
Solar farms, often built in remote locations with no regular human presence, will need even more security. Extended perimeter security solutions, such as thermal cameras and compact surveillance radars, capable of detecting and deterring possible threats before they can do harm, will be needed to secure solar panels and other valuable materials within solar farms.
In this article, we’ll discuss the history and projected growth of the solar industry, specific incidents of solar panel theft, why solar panels make such an attractive target to thieves, and what replacement and repair costs are incurred after solar panel theft or damage. Additionally, we will discuss methods for securing solar panels on private residences and how compact surveillance radars can help secure solar farms.
Growth of the Solar Industry to the Present Day
Solar has come a long way.
It all started in the 1950s with panels that could convert only 6% of absorbed sunlight into usable energy. Continuous research and development, however, has brought us to today, where commercially available solar panels run at 15-22% efficiency and the average annual growth rate of solar energy over the last decade has been an impressive 24%.
In the United States, solar power naturally first took a foothold in the sunniest states. To this day, solar power generation is led by California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida, but has also gained a significant presence in many east coast states.
Hopes for solar’s continued growth are high. Out of all the renewable power sources that generated 22% of the nation’s power in 2023, including solar, wind, hydro, biomass, and geothermal power, solar power is the fastest-growing renewable source of them all.
Future Growth of the Solar Industry
Solar energy generation is expected to continue to grow not only steadily, but at an accelerated pace, in the coming years. This is based, not just on the growth data from recent years, but on the increasing number of solar generation site development projects announced nationwide and under construction. These projects, in conjunction with favorable tax credit policies, paint an exciting picture for solar energy growth in the near future.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts a 75% percent growth in solar power generation from 2023 to 2025, with 38% of that growth expected to occur by the end of 2024.
Time, of course, will tell how accurate these projections are. Complex and competing factors, including continued research and development efforts, changing tax credit policies, economic factors, and disputes over the proposed locations of new solar farms may affect market growth.
Examples of Solar Panel Theft
Many incidents of theft and vandalism go unreported or publicized, here are a few publicized examples of solar generation material theft over the last several years:
- May 2018: Approximately $65,000 worth of solar equipment, including panels and inverters, were stolen from a UK solar farm.
- August 2019: Two solar sites in the UK were hit. The thieves got away with one-hundred and sixty-eight solar panels, valued altogether at more than $1 million United States dollars.
- November 2021: Two hundred and twenty solar panels, altogether worth approximately $90,000, were stolen from a UK solar farm.
- July 2023: Copper wires worth $13,000 were stolen from a solar installation attached to an Illinois grocery store.
- 2023: Over the course of the year, at least 42 people were arrested for stealing copper wires from solar power facilities in the Kanto region of Japan. Theft from the power facilities there rose by more than 300% between 2022 and 2023.
- January 2024: Thieves stole approximately $100,000 worth of copper from a solar farm in Fresno, California. The sheriff’s office reported that replacement and repair could take months and cost more than one million dollars.
With so many solar farm projects in development worldwide, investors and owners are understandably concerned about possible theft.
Adding to concerns is the possible confluence of two trends. The first trend is the placement of solar farms on land once used for farming. The second trend is the sharp increase in farm equipment theft in the last few years. The UK National Farmers Union documented a 22+% rise in rural theft in 2023 and solar investors are concerned that thieves who are willing to steal tractors, aluminum piping, and farming chemicals may easily turn their attention to unguarded solar panels on farming property.
Solar Farm Theft: Why It’s Rising
Healthy growth in any industry attracts notice, often inspiring increased participation, criticism, and, unfortunately, predatory behavior. The solar industry’s growth is currently being matched by a sharp rise in solar generation material theft. Police data from 2021 to 2022 shows a shocking 48% increase in solar panel and cabling theft according to EnergyGlobal.com.
Typically, solar panels are not serialized or otherwise marked for easy identification and tracking. This makes them all the more difficult to recover in the event of theft and all the easier for thieves to resell.
And of course, it’s not just the theft and resale of entire panels that’s a problem. Solar farm materials are often targeted for the valuable metals they contain such as silicon, silver, and copper. Solar farm cabling very often includes significant amounts of copper and, as of early 2024, the market price of copper is up 30% from where it was five years ago. In addition to the valuable items found on solar farms, assets more commonly found in private, residential solar power setups such as inverters, converters, and solar batteries, have also been targeted.
Finally, while less common than theft, solar customers, companies, and investors may also need to guard themselves against vandalism. In areas where a particular solar company or where the concept of solar power is unpopular, solar farms have faced sabotage efforts and become the sites of protests and civil unrest. If solar power continues to grow as expected, unrest and associated vandalism efforts may increase as well.
Repair and Replacement Costs for Solar Generation Materials
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has reported the average cost of replacing solar panels, due to damage or theft, can range from $500 to $1000 per panel.
It should be noted, however, that in order to remove and get away with valuable solar farm materials, thieves often have to cut, tear, or otherwise damage the infrastructure on which the panels are installed. This, combined with variable supply chain issues, lost revenue, and other factors, means that the repair and replacement cost for stolen solar materials is often much higher than expected. For example, the total repair and replacement cost for the 2024 Fresno incident listed above, has been estimated at up to ten times the market value of the stolen copper.
Perhaps even more concerning is the possibility of an interrupted power supply. As the world becomes more reliant on solar power, security incidents at solar farms could cut off the local power flow and financially as well as physically endanger communities that have come to rely on a steady stream of solar power.
Strategies for Protecting Residential Solar Panels
Sometimes the solar panels mounted atop homes and businesses are easier targets than the panels, cables, and other solar materials stored on solar farms. To secure rooftop solar panels, solar customers are encouraged to:
- Ensure proper installation. Incorrect mounting can lead to structural damage and make panels easier to steal.
- Link solar panel racks to each other. This makes it difficult for thieves to remove and steal individual panels, helping to both deter and delay them.
- Thoroughly understand your panel warranty and/or insurance terms.
- Get regular maintenance on your solar panels.
- Consider installing locking fasteners to your panels. This makes them difficult to remove without specialized equipment.
- Install additional security measures suited to your property such as smart fencing, motion-detecting lights, surveillance cameras, alarm systems, etc.
For many homes and establishments, a single rooftop solar panel will be worth just as much as any asset stored within the building. So be sure to take necessary precautions and take full advantage of the expertise and security options offered by your chosen solar panel vendor.
Solar Farms Need Extended Perimeter Security
When it comes to stopping theft and vandalism on large, remote properties such as solar farms, perimeter security is the first, most vital layer of protection needed.
Perimeter security systems detect, deter, and trigger alarms on property intrusions. Their purpose is to keep perpetrators out and, where that isn’t possible, at least slow them down and alert security personnel to their presence. Basic perimeter security systems detect threats when they have reached or as they are breaching a property’s physical perimeter. However, as thieves and vandals become more determined, sophisticated, and skilled, they are often able to enter, remove or damage valuable materials, and escape within just a few minutes. As a result, perimeter security systems that only detect threats as they are about to enter a property often prove too late to prevent harm.
Security cameras, including thermal cameras, may go some way in detecting threats before they get to the property perimeter. However, cameras' fields of view are limited and, even more importantly, they may be blinded during low-light conditions or when the landscape is obscured by rain, snow, fog, dust storms, or light glare. Glare and heat distortions may be of particular concern on solar farm properties.
Solar farms need extended perimeter security. In a word, they need security sensors that can detect potential intruders long before they reach the fence line as well as deter, delay, and trigger alarms on potential threats before they become an active perimeter breach.
The Problem with False & Nuisance Alarms
Another obstacle is false and nuisance alarms. With so many, and soon to be more, remote facilities to cover, the attention of security personnel and law enforcement must be reserved for real threats. False alarms waste the money of property owners and the time of vital personnel, and by monopolizing attention and wasting resources, an overabundance of false alarms may open security gaps and prevent real emergencies from being responded to as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Extended Perimeter Security for Solar Farms Through Compact Surveillance Radar
For many large critical infrastructure sites, the answer to extending perimeter security has been compact surveillance radar (CSR). Compact surveillance radars extend threat detection hundreds, sometimes thousands, of meters beyond a property’s fence line and help create responsive, site-customized security designs.
Rather than detecting light signatures, radars use precise, ongoing radio signals to detect motion and physical matter. This allows compact surveillance radars to detect targets through low-light and obscuring conditions. If a thief or vandal approaches a site on a cloudy night, through a dust storm, or through the rain or snow, the radar will still pick them up and track them. The radar will even cue the site’s security cameras to focus on any detected threats so that visual confirmation and visual tracking can be added to the radar tracking as soon as possible.
To take perimeter situational awareness a step farther, advanced behavior filtering, or AI, allows Spotter Radars to categorize detected targets. Even through darkness or obscuring conditions, the radar can distinguish between humans, vehicles, local wildlife, moving foliage, and shifting shadows. This automated identification filters out non-threats and drastically reduces the number of false and nuisance alarms picked up by a perimeter security system. Ultimately this saves money and reserves the resources of security personnel for responding to actual threats.
Early detection and nuisance alarm filtering are not enough, however. Accurate threat estimation and equivalent deterrence are needed for perimeter security systems to be effective in protecting solar farms and other critical infrastructure sites. To accomplish this, high-quality compact surveillance radar systems can be programmed with site-customized alarm zones stretching as far as the radar’s coverage. This allows viable threats to be classified according to their threat level/proximity and responded to accordingly. With site-customized alarm zones, more serious threats, such as those that have breached an alarm zone closer to the property’s fence line, will automatically trigger more serious security responses than less serious threats. For example, one solar farm’s alarm zones may initiate a call to law enforcement if a person or vehicle comes within 500m of the solar farm’s property line, but only turns on floodlights and sends a notification to security personnel if a person or vehicle lingers on the road 800m from the property line.
Most compact surveillance radar companies offer radar systems that can consolidate situational awareness over an entire property, bringing camera, radar, video management system data, and other perimeter sensor data together in a unified platform, like Spotter’s NetworkedIO system (NIO). In addition to this, Spotter Global offers an Integrative Management Center (IMC). This enterprise-level management system allows security leadership to maintain remote situational awareness over dozens of sites, able to isolate specific security issues from any of their sites in as few as two clicks within the IMC system.
Conclusion
The future of solar power is exciting. As solar power surges around the globe, we’re all eager to see its success. Those of us dedicated to “Preventing Harm” are eager to help solar farm security systems outpace the security threats emerging in the wake of the industry’s progress.
Solar panels and the other equipment stored in solar farms and rooftops constitute a significant investment. Increasingly frequent incidents of solar equipment theft have illuminated the need for robust, extended perimeter security that can reliably detect and deter thieves and vandals intent on targeting solar farms located in remote locations.
With extended perimeter security solutions and radar-enabled alarm zones, solar farms can detect and deter security threats and prevent theft and vandalism before they happen. Recent advances in radar security technology, pioneered by Spotter Global, will help solar companies reduce overall nuisance alarms, maintain enterprise-level situational awareness on multiple sites, and mitigate physical security threats with efficiency.
Owners of rooftop solar panels can employ sound installation practices, lock fasteners, solar panel linking, and other security measures to protect their investments from theft and vandalism.
With the right security measures in place, solar investments can stay secure and the future of solar power can remain sunny.