Rooftop solar panel fault starts fire in Alta Floresta, Brazil
2023Published 31 Oct 2026Responsible editor: Chief Editor
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What happened
A Brazilian news portal, RD News of Cuiabá, reported in a feature published on 10 December 2023 that a fault in a rooftop solar panel in Alta Floresta, a city about 800 km from Cuiabá in Mato Grosso state, caused the start of a fire. The inverter for the array had to be switched off so that firefighters could extinguish the flames. The article does not give the date of the fire, the type of building, the size of the system or the extent of any damage.
The piece is a general feature on solar fire risk. It also recalls a fire in September 2022 at a pet shop in Cuiabá, where solar panels beside a fuel station were reported to have overloaded and caught fire. It notes that the Mato Grosso fire service issued a technical note in 2022 on fire prevention at solar installations.
Contributing factors
The article does not state the cause of the Alta Floresta fault beyond a problem with a rooftop panel. General comments from an engineer quoted in the article, not established for this incident, include that DC arcs from a broken or damaged conductor can ignite insulation, that rodents can chew cables, that connectors may be installed incorrectly, and that older string systems are more susceptible. The engineer also notes that DC circuits keep generating while the grid supply is off, so the fire does not die out on its own.
Lessons learned
- Where a solar fire starts, isolate the inverter and the DC circuits early, because panels keep producing power while the grid is disconnected.
- Use qualified installers who follow the applicable technical standards, and check that the roof structure can bear the array load.
- Consider rapid-shutdown and arc-fault protection devices, particularly on older string systems, and inspect DC cabling and connectors for damage and rodent access.
More lessons on electrical protection and isolation, investigation and fleet-wide checks, from every incident on the register.
Source
Published 2026-10-31. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.
