Rooftop solar fire at Corporate Mailings warehouse in Towaco, New Jersey

What happened

A fire on 15 March 2024 damaged a Corporate Mailings warehouse in Towaco, New Jersey that had a rooftop solar system supplied by Tigo Energy and installed by Advanced Solar Products, according to a subrogation complaint reported by Insurance Business. The system was installed under a July 2021 engineer-procure-construct contract and used rapid shutdown devices. The complaint says that within the first eight months several strings gave improper readings and about seven rapid shutdown devices had thermal damage, and that an inspection in November 2022 offered corrective actions without mentioning signal interference between devices and an inverter.

An insurer says it paid the warehouse company more than 236,000 US dollars, with a 5,000 US dollar deductible, and in May 2026 sued Tigo Energy and Advanced Solar Products for more than 241,000 US dollars. Those allegations have not been tested in court, and no finding on the cause of the fire has been reported.

Contributing factors

The only account is an untested complaint. It reports early string faults and thermal damage to rapid shutdown devices, and alleges that possible interference between devices and an inverter was not identified or warned about, and that a 2020 manual did not specify connector types to prevent it. Whether any of this caused the fire is not established.

Lessons learned

1. Repeated string faults and thermal damage on rapid shutdown devices should be investigated before a fire occurs.
2. An inspection that finds possible interference between shutdown devices and an inverter must record what was checked and what remains open.

Not yet known

• Cause of the fire
• Turbine model and age
• Cost of the damage
• Downtime after the fire

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

Source

insurancebusinessmag.com