Inverter fire at Raywood Solar Farm in Victoria spreads into vegetation

In February 2025, a fire occurred in the late afternoon at a commercial scale solar PV farm at Raywood, Victoria, Australia, near Bendigo and approximately 155 km northwest of Melbourne. The fire started in an inverter and spread into long grass beneath the panel arrays. Multiple fire service units from several surrounding stations attended, working alongside the transmission system operator and the local distribution network operator. Smoke drifted towards Bendigo and residents were warned through emergency notification systems. The fire was brought under control in about three hours. The state energy safety regulator opened a formal investigation and, as an interim measure, directed that the site remain disconnected from the grid until vegetation beneath the panels had been cut back below 100 mm in height. No injuries were reported.

As reported by the attending fire service and in the regulator's public statements: (1) the fire originated in an inverter, with the specific electrical or mechanical initiating fault the subject of the regulator's investigation and not established at the time of reporting; (2) the fire spread from the inverter into uncut grass beneath the panels, giving a propagation path from a localised electrical fire into the surrounding ground cover; (3) the regulator made return to operation conditional on cutting vegetation beneath the panels below 100 mm, indicating that vegetation height at the site was treated as a live operational fire risk rather than only a factor in the incident itself.

1. Treat vegetation beneath and around arrays as a fire safety control rather than a landscaping task, since dry grass and dead material provide immediately available fuel adjacent to electrical plant.
2. Set and record a maximum vegetation height beneath arrays; the 100 mm figure applied by the regulator in this case offers a concrete benchmark that operators in fire prone regions can adopt even where not formally required.
3. Maintain a vegetation management programme that is scheduled, auditable, responsive to seasonal and weather conditions, and linked to the site fire risk assessment.
4. Expect that, after a fire, a regulator may impose conditions that keep a site disconnected until those conditions are met, and plan for the availability and revenue consequences of that possibility.
5. Assess fire spread risk by considering available fuel load, prevailing wind conditions and realistic fire service response times together, rather than each in isolation.
6. Engage with local emergency services on pre incident response planning, including site access, isolation points and water supply, recognising that a fire involving vegetation can draw in units from several stations.
7. Include community notification arrangements in the site emergency response plan, since smoke from a fire involving electrical plant and solar modules is a public concern beyond the site boundary.
8. Do not assume that a smaller site attracts less regulatory scrutiny than a large one; the same investigation and directive powers can apply.

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