Firefighters And Solar Panels

Firefighters and solar panel safety.

Firefighters and solar panels.

Today in the united states demand for solar is at an all time high and the fire. The amount of electricity generated by solar energy is increasing exponentially. Solar panels pose an extremely low fire hazard. Marc van de velde a loss prevention expert at xl catlin discusses the issues.

In actual roof fires with roof mounted solar panels fire damage has involved areas of between 1 000 and 183 000 ft 2 93 and 17 000 m 2. The first way is by turning off your inverter by a simple flip of the switch located on the front panel see picture below. In laboratory based fire tests of roof assemblies 1 2 the maximum allowable fire spread is between approximately 20 and 40 ft 2 1 9 and 3 7 m 2 depending on whether an a b or c rating is desired. Since solar panels are everywhere from home roofs to roadside signs to supermarkets firefighter training is intended to deal with all the challenges that may arrive when fighting fire with solar products involved.

In fact photon magazine has recorded no more than 1 incident per 10 000 installations so a house equipped with properly installed solar panels will not catch fire. 10 17 16 1 2 courtesy of u s. The manufacturers of solar panels state that anything that reduces or blocks the sunlight from reaching the panel surface will reduce energy production. Regulations must be unified and adhered to so that renewable energy companies in all fifty states are in compliance with research based federal safety recommendations.

However solar panels also present some new and challenging risks especially to firefighters. In any event there are a few basic precautions you can take just in case. The rising popularity of solar energy also requires firefighters to develop better training for emergency scenarios involving solar panels. That forces the panels to.

Solar power 101 and the fire service. Much inaccurate information about pv and firefighter safety has been published on the internet recently even to the point of recommendations to let it burn if solar panels are spotted on a roof. Another big concern that bothers most people is how well firefighters are capable of controlling a house fire with solar panels.