Homology theory provides new and powerful solutions to address the coverage problems in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). They are based on algebraic objects, such as Čech complex and Rips complex. Čech complex gives accurate information about coverage quality, but requires a precise knowledge of the relative locations of nodes. This assumption is rather strong and hard to implement in practical deployments. Rips complex provides an approximation of Čech complex. It is easier to build and does not require any knowledge of nodes location. This simplicity is at the expense of accuracy. Rips complex cannot always detect all coverage holes. It is then necessary to evaluate its accuracy. This work proposes to use the proportion of the area of undiscovered coverage holes as performance criteria. Investigations show that it depends on the ratio between communication and sensing radii of a sensor. Closed-form expressions for lower and upper bounds of the accuracy are also derived. For those coverage holes that can be discovered by Rips complex, a homology-based distributed algorithm is proposed to detect them. Simulation results are consistent with the proposed analytical lower bound, with a maximum difference of 0.5%. Upper-bound performance depends on the ratio of communication and sensing radii. Simulations also show that the algorithm can localize about 99% coverage holes in about 99% cases.