What recent news?
EMP has been a "factor" since the 1950s, and it's only worth planning for it if you're exceedingly paranoid.
Current commercial solar cell arrays would probably not survive such an event.
The cell-to-cell wiring (and the contacts on the faces of the cells themselves) will act as small (but adequate) antennas *begging* the pulse to enter and fry the cells. Whether or not it also damages the rest of the system (controller, etc) is actually far easier to design against: shield all cables in separately grounded metal conduits, put good inductors in series with the power feeds, shunt both ends of the inductors to ground (metal frame) through capacitors (we're trying to eat the "pulse" by reshaping it to a rounded-ends hump). Also shunt the two feed wires to *each other* through bipolar capacitors. (bipolar, since you don't know which side of the lines will have the "positive" side of the pulse).
It really is exactly the same as lightning protection... a lightning strike within 100 feet will easily exceed any human airburst EMP that's far enough away to not kill you by the gamma radiation.
added: you could boost the solar panel's survivability by encasing it in a fully-surrounding metal grid (think copper-wire window screens). That will create a Faraday cage, and the Pulse's electrons will remain on the outer surface instead of going into the box to hurt the cells.
The screening will, of course, be a direct performance hit on your panel's output, since it will be a 10 to 20% shadow across the entire array. Think "cloudy day charging"... every day.
--dick
p.s. there are many companies who would be *happy* to install/modify your systems for EMP protection. Googling finds them. One example is:
http://www.protectiongroup.com/LP/EMP3
p.p.s. This site:
http://www.futurescience.com/emp/emp-protection.html and this page:
http://www.futurescience.com/emp/E1-E2-E3.html has a relatively decent run-down on "home made" EMP protection. An E1 pulse of 50,000 volts per meter means that a 4 inch piece of wire is capable of picking up 5,000 volts ... so your inter-cell protection would have to be able to handle that. The site suggests coarse aluminum screening for shielding the cell array, but i'd opt for a finer grid and copper's always nicer.
Where you live will have an effect... if you expect Enemy Action, assume that it will be aimed at the highly populated areas, probably ranging from Wash DC to Boston. If you're in mid-Montana, you probably won't be directly targeted by a limited EMP attack at all.