This article describes solar testing carried out by a California-based laboratory. A 100lb punch bag, sandbags and a ball bearing the size of your fist are not necessarily what you would associate with state-of-the-art testing for solar panels. But at UL's solar laboratories in San Jose, these experiments that look like they were cooked up in an eccentric inventor's garden shed, put panels of all flavours through their paces on safety testing before they reach the US market. The boxer's punch bag is dropped side-on like a wrecking ball onto an upright panl in a simulation of what could happen in a real-world installation if, for example, a tree fell against it. Panels always shatter in the impact test, but small chunks are better than tiny shards.
