Solar panels on a South Korean farm catch fire in Damyang

What happened

Solar panels on a farm in Damyang county, South Jeolla, South Korea, caught fire on a Thursday afternoon, according to a report in Korea JoongAng Daily. The local fire department called 27 firefighters to the scene. No one was hurt. The report does not name the farm, the owner, the installer or the equipment maker, and it does not say whether the array was ground-mounted or fixed to a building.

The fire department said it would investigate the cause of the fire, and no cause had been reported at the time of the article. The report does not give the year of the fire. The item appeared within a wider news roundup on solar power, and the date of the fire is not shown on the tag page where it was found.

Contributing factors

Not reported. The fire department had not yet established the cause at the time of the report.

Lessons learned

1. Operators of farm and rural solar installations should check DC cabling, connectors, junction boxes and inverters on a fixed schedule, because electrical faults are a common starting point for array fires.
2. Local fire services need up-to-date site plans, isolation points and water supply information for remote solar sites so that crews can respond safely and quickly.
3. Operators and regulators should record the date, array type and mounting for every fire so that causes can be compared across installations.

More lessons on maintenance, inspection and ageing assets, fire suppression and firefighting, emergency response and public communication, from every incident on the register.

Source

koreajoongangdaily.com