Solar and Hurricane Season: What Central Florida Homeowners Should Know

Solar and hurricanes are two things Florida forces you to think about together, especially if you’re deciding whether to install right before storm season starts.

Short version: Solar systems installed under a proper Florida permit are engineered for your county’s specific wind requirements, among the strictest in the country. Real world storm data, including from Hurricane Ian, shows well installed systems generally hold up well, with most failures traced to mounting hardware rather than the panels themselves.

The building code already accounts for this

The Florida Building Code requires solar racking and mounting systems to be engineered for the wind loads specific to your county, standards well above what most other states require. This isn’t optional or something you have to ask for. A properly permitted installation already has this built in.

What the real world track record shows

After major storms like Hurricane Ian, well installed solar systems generally held up better than many people expected. Where damage did happen, it usually traced back to the mounting and attachment hardware rather than the panels themselves.

What to actually ask an installer

• Confirm they’re pulling a real permit engineered for your specific county’s wind requirements, not just using generic, nationally rated mounting hardware
• Ask about the wind rating of the racking and attachment system specifically, not just the panel’s own spec sheet number
• Confirm with your homeowner’s insurance that the system is properly added to your policy. Coverage details vary by carrier and are worth checking before, not after, a storm

Our installer guide has more questions worth asking before you sign anything.

The backup power angle

Central Florida has real outage risk during hurricane season, which changes the calculus on batteries a bit. See our Cost Guide for what battery storage typically adds to a system price. Here, a battery is more about keeping the lights on during an outage than about maximizing savings, since Florida’s net metering already credits excess power well.

This page is general information, not engineering or insurance advice. Work with a licensed, Florida permitted installer for requirements specific to your home and county.

Sources:
https://www.floridabuilding.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Building_Code