Renew Risk partners with Vāyuh on next-generation US Solar Model
David Vicary
Solar Lead
Renew Risk
19 November 2025 - Hailstorms cause billions in solar farm damage annually, yet traditional risk models fail to capture their hyper-local nature. Renewable energy risk management specialists Renew Risk today announces their partnership with AI-powered catastrophe modelling firm Vāyuh to help solve this critical gap.
The collaboration brings together Renew Risk’s specialist expertise in renewable risk management with Vāyuh’s advanced AI and physics-based modelling to support the development of a next-generation US Solar Model.
Built specifically for solar assets, Renew Risk’s new model will be a paradigm shift in how hail risk is understood and priced.
A model that reflects reality
Traditionally, the insurance industry has relied on models built using patchy historical records, which cannot capture the hyper-localised nature of hail events – often unrecorded in the sparsely populated regions where solar farms are typically built.
Together with Vāyuh, Renew Risk is taking a different approach. Using Vāyuh’s artificial intelligence expertise to understand the atmospheric ingredients that result in severe hail – such as temperature gradients, humidity and wind shear – their physics-AI engine generates millions of synthetic events across the exact locations where utility-scale solar farms are constructed, filling the gaps left by observation bias and existing knowledge gaps. This intelligence is then calibrated by Renew Risk and augmented by additional data including solar farm features integral to managing hail damage, such as panel glass thickness and the angle of tilt, resulting in a hail model for US solar farms with an unprecedented level of precision and reduced uncertainty.
Modelling at speed
This new approach to hail risk modelling can iterate continuously, with new updates such as prospective solar farm locations or new regions easy to incorporate at speed – an impossible task with the traditional methods of hail risk modelling. The hyper-localised approach also facilitates more efficient simulation runs, reducing timescales as well as the compute cost.
“There’s huge variability in the hail risk across the US, currently not reflected at the required granularity in traditional risk modelling and insurance pricing. By combining a machine learning approach to hail risk modelling with our specialist asset-first capabilities, we’re creating a US Solar Model that can increase pricing accuracy, improve understanding of hail risk and increase the resilience of the renewable energy transition.”
“Hailstorms present a unique set of challenges for modellers focused on natural catastrophes. Unlike earthquakes and hurricanes, they are high frequency, low severity and incredibly localised. AI models are really powerful because they are able to 1) learn complex interactions between atmospheric variables 2) ingest disparate data sources such as reanalysis products, event reports, radar data 3) ability to do fast, powerful inference. With this we’re able to recreate storms and forecast hail size, intensity and accumulation zones at an unrivalled level. This partnership with Renew Risk is an exciting opportunity to bring that expertise to their renewable risk management capabilities and help transform hail risk management for solar farms in the US.”
About Renew Risk
Renew Risk provides the enhanced insights needed for insurers, energy developers and financiers to make informed decisions about renewable energy assets. Driven by client needs, Renew Risk combines a science-first approach with a passion for energy resilience to provide an unparalleled portfolio of catastrophe models and risk insights focussed solely on renewable energy infrastructure. Together, we can power the energy transition.
About Vāyuh
Vāyuh is an AI-powered catastrophe risk modelling company that uses physics-informed foundation models to predict natural catastrophes including hail, tornadoes, and straight-line winds. Founded by Berkeley PhDs with pioneering research in AI and climate science (ACM Gordon Bell Prize winners), the company has developed proprietary AI foundation models for natural catastrophes that accurately capture the hyper-local nature of these events where traditional approaches fail.
Vayuh's technology enables insurers to price risk more accurately while expanding coverage to previously uninsurable locations. By leveraging massive-scale compute partnerships, Vayuh delivers catastrophe modelling results significantly faster than conventional approaches, enabling dynamic risk assessment and real-time hazard mapping for the modern insurance market. Learn more at vayuh.ai.