OT Solar panels start fire

[The Natural Philosopher]

the solar panels don't need the inverter to generate volts and potenially, amps.

[dennis]

and?

[The Natural Philosopher]

volts and and amps can create fires ...

[dennis]

The only things there are wires, a DC isolator and the inverter. The inverter will have pretty good protection built in. You may as well say that the mains wiring and switches are going to start fires as there is much more of that in most buildings.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Ok, tell me how you switch off a solar panel from the street.

When the house is burning?

[dennis]

Tell me how you do it from the mains or do they wait until someone has got to a substation and isolated the entire area including those on dialysis before trying the rescue people?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh that's easy.

You can either trip the main RCD or pull the fuse in the (these days) external meter cabinet

Or indeed pull the fuse at the substation.

or do they wait until someone has

Anyone whose on dialysis without battery backup can handle an outage.

[dennis]

I would say the majority of buildings don't have either a main RCD or an external meter cabinet with a breaker in it.

But they don't.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Why don't you ask the fire brigade?

[Dave Liquorice]

happens

source...

How?

[dennis]

The heat melts things, just like a fuse, there is stuff that will melt on the panels I have seen, possibly deliberately put there being part of the protection circuits.

The cable shouldn't be a problem, the short circuit current should be less than the cable and connectors can handle (unlike mains, at least on the typical house systems) so what's going to burn?

I would guess that they actually managed to damage some other cabling and that created the fire but they are blaming the panels because they are on the roof. I suppose we will get a proper report sometime.