OT Solar panels start fire

[Nightjar]

Somebody in Hove may be regretting fitting solar panels to the town hall.

[Jethro_uk]

On Tue, 21 Apr 2015 09:16:47 +0100, Nightjar Somebody in Hove may be regretting fitting solar panels to the town

Echoes a discussion in this very group a while back about photovoltaic cells being a risk to fireman, and the rumour that some insurance companies were upping premiums for houses with them fitted ...

[Dave Liquorice]

Curious that they were only inspected 2 weeks ago.

And on a nice bright sunny day you can't turn the things off.

[Andrew Gabriel]

They can electrocute even with just moonlight, although probably not start a fire.

[Jonno]

Nightjar scribbled

The place is being renovated. Some prat working their f***ed up.

[dennis]

On 21/04/2015 09:16, Nightjar

There you have it, checked last week, they moved something and made a fault that wasn't there before.

[harryagain]

Drivel.

[dennis]

Do you have the figures as to just how many milliamps at what voltage they produce in moon light?

[dennis]

A strip of duct tape will do that. If you want something that lasts longer then use the aluminium tape that actually works on ducts.

[Nightjar]

I wouldn't be surprised if that were cause and effect.

Possibly the reason for using foam.

[RobertL]

Moonlight has about 1 millionth of the intensity of sunlight.

(if that helps)

Robert

[Brian Gaff]

Its daft as in the normal way, no way would they be a fire risk. sounds like the cowboys are alive in Hove to me. Brian

[Dave Liquorice]

Raises an interesting problem. Take a solar PV array, what happens if you short or otherwise try to overload the array? Unlike the mains there isn't any more energy available to trip/blow any over current protection. So you have this 4 kW energy source feeding into a fault and no means of automagically removing that energy source... Nice.

[Brian Gaff]

Further, I'm suspicious as the building was being worked on. Kind of makes me wonder if they shorted out something and the weakest link got very hot. Brian

[Dave Liquorice]

Big "strip of duct tape" to cover just one solar PV panel, let alone an array.

Partial shadowing does reduce the output a bit but that is all it does, it doesn't totally remove the output.

[Andrew Gabriel]

600VDC (or possibly 900VDC on commercial buildings) at several amps which can't be switched off remotely is always going to be a fire risk. It's ideal for generating long arcs.

[dennis]

It probably wasn't the solar panels at all, the mains would be live in the building to get the solar inverter to work.

[Dave Liquorice]

current

Where does the extra energy come from to blow the fuses?

[dennis]

[dennis]

From the fire.