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tytower
Newbie

Joined: 19/11/2017
Location: Australia
Posts: 21

Posted: 09:09am 16 Jan 2018

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Has anyone got a picture of a burnt panel that was not intentionally lit?

I have one of a pretty badly water/corrosion damaged one and its still up on the roof doing just fine with my switches where they should be just before the inverter.

renewableMark

Guru

Joined: 09/12/2017
Location: Australia
Posts: 1678

Posted: 09:16am 16 Jan 2018

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That doesn't look good.
Wonder if you could do some surgery from the back and epoxy or polyurethane it back up to seal it from the elements? Don't think I'de leave that on the roof myself.

Cheers Caveman Mark
Off grid eastern Melb

yahoo2

Guru

Joined: 05/04/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 1166

Posted: 10:50pm 21 Jan 2018

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Madness said As far as I know the isolator at the panels is for things like fire so that they can keep any risk to the smallest area possible. If the sun is shining through you cannot actually turn off the panels. However on the local TV news there have been a couple instances of fires at the panels on the roof. Could that have been caused by a faulty breaker?

that is pretty much how it went down.

There was a state fire chief ranted about panels on roofs catching fire (even though there were zero proven cases) and insisted isolators be fitted on the roof, rules were changed.

Then we had a spate of fires caused by roof mounted isolators

rules were changed back, in most places. if you have to fit a roof mounted isolator there is a short list of good products and/or mount it in a weatherproof box.

I'm confused, no wait... maybe I'm not...

George65
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Joined: 18/09/2017
Location: Australia
Posts: 308

Posted: 07:19am 22 Jan 2018

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yahoo2 said

Madness said

There was a state fire chief ranted about panels on roofs catching fire (even though there were zero proven cases) and insisted isolators be fitted on the roof, rules were changed.

Then we had a spate of fires caused by roof mounted isolators

This is exactly the trouble with half these regulations and " safety" rules and practices. they cause more freaking problems than what they prevent in the first place.
Add to that needless expense, complication and extra failure points and it's exactly the reason I like to do things MY way.

then there are always the " what if's" that are brought up a million times but when you drill down a bit, you find they may be one or no documented cases of it ever happening yet people are paranoid about it when they are far more greater and practical dangers that happen every day and no one ever mentions them.

I have fuses for both the AC and DC side of my setup and the isolators are where you can get to them. If I want to work on the array itself, all I have to do is disconnect a connector on the panels and the array is dead and I'm safe.

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