Fighting Fires With Solar Panels

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.

Fighting fires with solar panels. 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. 1 2 courtesy of u s. Fire fighting strategies and procedures. It is not just californians that are opening their morning newspapers to images of smoldering trees menacing flames and fleeing families.

Currently the national fire incident reporting system does not detail how many structure fires included a solar array or how many firefighters have been injured fighting fires in solar powered. This study focuses on structural fire fighting in buildings and structures involving solar power systems utilizing solar panels that. When fire departments arrive to a house fire where solar panels are interconnected to the power grid they have two options to kill the power on your solar panels and both ways are very quick. Today in the united states demand for solar is at an all time high and the fire service must become educated and trained on the.

The first way is by turning off your inverter by a simple flip of the switch located on the front panel see picture below. A revolution which has become increasingly popular within the last decade to help mitigate the risk associated with dc arc faults and further more solar panel fires. As a result when battling fires in buildings with solar panels firefighters need to be prepared to apply the same tactics used for fighting electrical fires and be continuously aware of electrical shock hazards. Fighting fires with solar power.

The increase of wildfires has become a worldwide problem with. Such technologies are in the form of micro inverters and certain dc optimised systems such as solaredge with a safe dc mode. By spw august 23 2018. Although the flames were finally extinguished after 29 hours the building was completely destroyed.

Another big concern that bothers most people is how well firefighters are capable of controlling a house fire with solar panels. Among these alternative energy uses are buildings equipped with solar power systems which can present a variety of significant hazards should a fire occur.