Fire at Sungrow-owned Raywood solar farm in Victoria spreads into vegetation

What happened

On 20 February 2025, a fire broke out in the late afternoon at the Raywood solar farm near Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, approximately 155 km northwest of Melbourne, owned by a subsidiary of Sungrow Power Australia Pty Ltd. Energy Safe Victoria said the fire originated in electrical equipment, and it spread into long grass beneath the panel arrays. Reporting differed on the item: pv magazine Australia described a transformer, and later reporting described a Sungrow inverter.

Country Fire Authority and Fire Rescue Victoria units from several surrounding stations attended, with Victoria Police, and the distribution network operator Powercor attended the scene. Smoke drifted towards Bendigo and residents were warned through emergency notification systems. The fire was brought under control in about three hours. Energy Safe Victoria 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. Two days later, at midday on 22 February 2025, Energy Safe Victoria directed five solar farms owned by subsidiaries of Sungrow Power Australia Pty Ltd, at Raywood, Goornong, Ledcourt, Stawell and Moolort, to stop generating electricity. The directions followed an inspection of 18 solar farms across Shepparton, Bendigo, Kerang and Mildura over two weeks in February, in which the regulator found inadequate vegetation management, insufficient fire breaks and vegetation that had grown too high.

Contributing factors

As reported by the attending fire services and in the public statements of Energy Safe Victoria: (1) the fire originated in electrical equipment, in the words of the regulator, with the item itself and the initiating fault the subject of its investigation and not established at the time of reporting, the cited report describing a transformer and later reporting a Sungrow inverter; (2) the fire spread from that equipment 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.

Lessons learned

1. A fire that starts in a solar inverter or transformer can spread rapidly through uncut grass beneath the arrays, so operators must keep vegetation height below 100 mm as a standing control.
2. After an electrical fire at a Sungrow site, the regulator required disconnection until vegetation was cut back, so owners should plan for possible multi-week outages and revenue loss.
3. Smoke from a solar farm fire drifted towards Bendigo, prompting public warnings, so site plans must include community notification arrangements and liaison with local fire services.

More lessons on spacing, layout and fire spread, emergency response and public communication, fire suppression and firefighting, from every incident on the register.

Not yet known

• Exact model and age of the failed inverter or transformer
• Total downtime and lost generation at Raywood
• Cost of damage and vegetation works

This entry is updated when these are reported. Get an alert for the next one like it.

Source

pv-magazine-australia.com