Amazon warehouse fire linked to solar installation

[LnP]

Amazon warehouse fire

Any piece of electrical equipment, even a toaster, has the potential to start a fire. So what should we do to manage the risk that PV panels on a roof start a fire. Infra red checks as mentioned in this article? 

Edited September 5, 2022 by LnP

[markc]

Wait for the idiots to call for a ban on PV

[SteamyTea]

13 minutes ago, markc said:

Wait for the idiots to call for a ban on PV

Will that be the same idiots that claim they don't work and never, ever, pay back their energy debt.

[Kelvin]

Our friends lost their self-build to a fire that was a result of faulty wiring in their PV system. They’d been in the house for three months. The insurance settled quickly and it was rebuilt but they never moved back in to it and sold it instead. 

[Radian]

56 minutes ago, LnP said:

Infra red checks as mentioned in this article? 

Sounds fine in principle but in practice the majority of the interconnects are under the modules so shielded from the IR imager. Module hot-spots are going to be easy to see but the bit most likely to catch fire is probably hidden. Closely monitoring the power output and having some way of checking it against what would be expected WRT local irradiance levels would be my preferred way of keeping an eye on things. No bad thing to have anyway to understand how the installation is behaving (i.e. when cleaning is needed) but would quickly show up power loss through electrical faults - i.e. the cause of fires.