A fire broke out, this Monday (9), in a clothing store located in Rio Claro, in the interior of São Paulo. Around 11am, shopkeepers in the region noticed a smoke coming from the photovoltaic system installed on the roof of the establishment.
According to the businessman Luiz Eduardo Thome, owner of the store, the Fire Department was called and the fire was controlled. Nobody was injured. In total, eight solar modules were damaged.
The causes of the incident have not yet been disclosed. For the engineer Diego Fernandes, from INE3 Energia, an error in the design, installation or even in the quality of the equipment used may have been the reason for the problem. “To this end, I recommend that a field study be carried out with a report from a specialist to try to identify the origin”, explained Fernandes.
cheap is expensive
This is yet another case of fire that hit a photovoltaic system. In September, the second floor of a accounting Office, located in the city of Goiânia (GO), caught fire. Company employees and neighbors observed that flames were coming from the inverter, installed on the roof of the building.
Therefore, situations like these, for example, reinforce the idea of the need for capable installation companies. In fact, when the price of a project appears to be more attractive than normal, what is cheap can be expensive.
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O Canal Solar investigated the case that occurred in commerce in Rio Claro and found that the consumer, after several researches, chose to hire the integrating company, evaluating only the price. Another company, which also offered its solutions to the customer, stated that it was unable to close the contract with the customer due to the impossibility of covering the amount.
“Only the price of our materials, without resale margin, was giving the competitor’s total price, including in addition to materials, labor and engineering design”, said a source interviewed by the Canal Solar. “Fires like this are very serious. It is a matter of safety and respect for the end customer. Unfortunately, similar situations are increasing significantly in Brazil,” she said.
Answers of 7
Unfortunately, this is almost the rule in our Brazil, it reminds me of the beginning of the installation of vehicular gas, which, as it also involves safety, the standards and requirements were very strict, but... time passed, the propinoduct operated and today it is as it is.
It is regrettable that there are unprepared “professionals” causing people to be deceived and incur often immeasurable losses…
One of the important pieces of information to pass on to the end customer is that: “Most inverters are rated for outdoor installation”; but with an IP-65 degree of protection (dust and water proof).
In other words, the installation can be carried out where there is no high incidence of sunlight, for example, in an open gourmet area, service area; On the roof, the inverter overheats, causing damage and posing a very high risk.
Congratulations on the disclosure of the fact and especially for the correct, dignified and professional work in investigating the news behind what happened.
Not specifically, there can only be these two options that were mentioned in the article. Note that the colleague categorically mentions an error in the installation, design or poor quality of the product. We can have a failure even in good quality products. Anyone who has done or studied basic material sciences or has undergone some specialization in failure analysis knows that the first mistake is to have preconceived ideas. We can have countless failures, even a failure in an MC4 connector in a module that is of good quality. Emphasizing safety and quality is paramount, but without having preconceived ideas, or materials that in theory would be a more technical article but that raises more doubts than helps the sector...
This is because the standard requires that the inverter not be installed on the ceiling… really, incompetence! These should go off the market. To achieve this, a set of rules must be drawn up to avoid this type of situation... let's go to ABNT!
Basic error by the installing company when using a fixing structure with a minimum height of less than 10cm recommended by photovoltaic module manufacturers.