Anyone had solar equipment stolen?

[DanKegel]

Evidently it happens:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/te...y/24solar.html
And it can be big business:
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...many_100023864

Has it happened to anyone here?

[peakbagger]

It hasn't happened to me but it does happen at remote camps in the region. Many of the camps are out in the woods with only seasonal road access and no grid for very long distances (one nearby pond is 21 miles in on logging roads), folks have small off the grid systems for seasonal use. In the winter, the woods are full of snowmobiles and some of the folks use them to steal stuff from camps as the likely hood of getting caught is poor. The thieves usually aren't specific, they just steal things they think will sell. Most of those systems use the older generation of 12 volt panels that were a lot smaller. As the panels get bigger I expect they are lot harder to hide and move around. Frequently the thieves are far better at stealing then selling and they get caught with a stash of odd ball gear.

The local national forest had several early generation off grid solar installations to service campgrounds and parking lots, someone came in one weekend and stripped every one of them at several sites along a highway that runs through the forest. They were mostly older Siemens M75 12 volt panels or ones of similar vintage..

I suppose if someone is paranoid it wouldn't take long to use an electric engraver and engrave their drivers license number on the aluminum frames. Thieves and pawn shops don't want to deal with personalized panels as they are way to easy to trace and deniability is low compared to a generic serial number. Most panels are shipped on a pallet with the sides of the frames exposed so it would probably take less than an hour to engrave them. The one caveat is it would break the surface finish and in corrosive areas could lead to surface corrosion that would could void the guarantee. I have seen discussions on using vandal resistant hardware for panels but the trend is to make the hardware standard and simple as possible to speed up installs so vandal resistant would be contrary to the market trend to KISS.

If the value is such that there is steal to order by pros (like autos) there is not much one can do but I expect most are opportunity targets. There was reportedly a fairly active market during the housing crisis where the homeowner would strip anything he could prior to foreclosure and sell it on craigslist. I expect leased panels were probably part of the stuff the homeowners would sell. Leasing wasn't as popular back then but I expect that if there is another foreclosure crisis a lot of panels owned by leasing companies will get resold.

My most accessible pole mount array uses standard hardware to mount the rails of the panels to Unistrut. Unfortunately, although a simple connection, the way the hardware has to screw in is a PITA and takes me about 5 to 10 minutes each corner. It also requires scaffolding unless someone knows how I built it.

[DanKegel]

OK, maybe I'll go engrave a few of my panels, then.

The frameless ones I guess I'll just sharpie

[Sunstar]

Not surprising...people still whatever they can. Sad, but true :/

[SunEagle]

OK, maybe I'll go engrave a few of my panels, then.

The frameless ones I guess I'll just sharpie

I guess that is better than not doing anything. Of course you could use barbed wire or attack dogs walking around an array.

Maybe this is something to be developed in the market place concerning security that will sound an alarm or at least scare off the individuals that try to steal your hardware.

[J.P.M.]

I guess that is better than not doing anything. Of course you could use barbed wire or attack dogs walking around an array.

Maybe this is something to be developed in the market place concerning security that will sound an alarm or at least scare off the individuals that try to steal your hardware.

As long as "You could just" logic seems to be gaining favor around here lately, maybe "they" could just put a chip in the equipment (like dog/cat I.D.'s) and/or and have some of the owner's DNA attached/embedded some way.

[DanKegel]

The solaredge monitoring could throw an alert if your optimizer modules (which have serial numbers) showed up in someone else's system.

Come to think of it, it could throw an alert if your system went offline. I wonder if it does already.