{"id":89796,"date":"2019-03-29T15:26:58","date_gmt":"2019-03-29T14:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sma-sunny.com\/?p=89796"},"modified":"2019-05-02T11:18:29","modified_gmt":"2019-05-02T09:18:29","slug":"fire-safety-for-pv-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sma-sunny.com\/en\/fire-safety-for-pv-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire safety for PV systems"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Australia, over 2 million households enjoy safe and clean energy from PV systems. Despite this, some online media sources claim that PV systems cause fires and put firefighters at grave risk. These articles spread fears about PV safety and are sometimes used to sell add-on safety products like module shutdown devices. Fortunately, these fears are unfounded.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this post, we show evidence from comprehensive studies that indicates existing PV systems are generally safe, fires are rare, and firefighters are still able to work safely.<\/p>\n

1. Fires caused by PV systems are rare<\/h2>\n

Independent testing and research institutes T\u00dcV Rheinland [1] and Fraunhofer ISE [2], have found that less than 0.006% of PV systems have caused fires in Germany.<\/p>\n

In Australia, a similarly low percentage of installations have had fires caused by PV. Between 2009 \u2013 2015, less than 0.03% [6] of PV systems had recorded fire incidents [3].<\/p>\n

2. Fires were mainly caused by human\/external factors that can\u2019t be prevented by additional safety devices<\/h2>\n

Of the small number of PV system fires, \u201chuman errors\u201d are mainly to blame. T\u00dcV\u2019s report surveyed 210 PV fires and found that poor workmanship and poor design account for the majority of fires caused by PV systems [1].<\/p>\n

A breakdown of the reasons for PV system fires in Germany. Data source: T\u00dcV [1]\n

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