Tweet
Recently our area was hit with some wicked wild fires, and our family lost our second home. It could have been WAY worse, there are folks all around our area who lost everything in their primary residences... just an awful situation. We are a LONG way off from completing the cleanup (FEMA is in the process of moving through the area property by property), or even deciding where to rebuild the home. In the mean time I've got a 4 month old, 4kW ground mount solar array sitting essentially in the front pasture that went untouched. The system had been installed about 3 weeks before the fire hit and has been just sitting there ever since.
The array and racking seems to be completely untouched. All output runs into a PV combiner box with fuses for each string, combines into on the bus bars into 2 1/0 AWG cables, then runs about 75' uphill through conduit 18" underground where it meets a junction box, then runs another 150' or so into underground conduit into where the garage used to be where it presumably met up with the DC disconnect, Charge controller, inverter and main panel for the house.
Long story short, it seems like everything between the array and the junction box on the hillside seems to be in good shape. No burn marks or scorching of any kind. The garage and all the hardware inside are COMPLETELY toast though. In the days following the fire the state fire department wouldn't let us back into the property because it was still behind the fire line, so the panels were generating current into where ever the burned out cabling grounded out for 2 or 3 days until we could get to the property and trip the breakers at the combiner box.
Is there any reason to think the panels may be unusable? There is still voltage being produced on each string, but we don't have anything to do with it for right now. Is there any problem leaving the breakers tripped at the combiner box for at least a year until we actually make progress on the rebuild? It seems to me that when ever we do decide where the garage is going to live we should just be able to replace the cabling and conduit between the junction box and old house that's been burned out, but the array should be good to go. Is there anything i should check on to verify array health aside from measuring Voc/Isc?
Thanks for any thoughts you guys might have! In the mean time does anyone have any ideas on what we can do with the panels that are up? Should we worry about covering them, or capping off conduit? I'm just trying to think of things now that might ensure that the array is ready to rock when we do finally get our plan together.
The array and racking seems to be completely untouched. All output runs into a PV combiner box with fuses for each string, combines into on the bus bars into 2 1/0 AWG cables, then runs about 75' uphill through conduit 18" underground where it meets a junction box, then runs another 150' or so into underground conduit into where the garage used to be where it presumably met up with the DC disconnect, Charge controller, inverter and main panel for the house.
Long story short, it seems like everything between the array and the junction box on the hillside seems to be in good shape. No burn marks or scorching of any kind. The garage and all the hardware inside are COMPLETELY toast though. In the days following the fire the state fire department wouldn't let us back into the property because it was still behind the fire line, so the panels were generating current into where ever the burned out cabling grounded out for 2 or 3 days until we could get to the property and trip the breakers at the combiner box.
Is there any reason to think the panels may be unusable? There is still voltage being produced on each string, but we don't have anything to do with it for right now. Is there any problem leaving the breakers tripped at the combiner box for at least a year until we actually make progress on the rebuild? It seems to me that when ever we do decide where the garage is going to live we should just be able to replace the cabling and conduit between the junction box and old house that's been burned out, but the array should be good to go. Is there anything i should check on to verify array health aside from measuring Voc/Isc?
Thanks for any thoughts you guys might have! In the mean time does anyone have any ideas on what we can do with the panels that are up? Should we worry about covering them, or capping off conduit? I'm just trying to think of things now that might ensure that the array is ready to rock when we do finally get our plan together.
Comment