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Both Amazon and Walmart have pulled back on solar due to fires and electrical issues... https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/01/amazon-took-solar-rooftops-offline-last

Both Amazon and Walmart have pulled back on solar due to fires and electrical issues... https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/01/amazon-took-solar-rooftops-offline-last-year-after-fires-explosions.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/01/amazon-took-solar-rooftops-o... https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/05/tesla-and-walmart-settle-over-solar-rooftop-fires.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/05/tesla-and-walmart-settle-ove... Might have been a Tesla issue in both cases.

Syonyk 4y ago
I've no idea why you're being downvoted, because it is a very real issue. You don't have to burn down many warehouses with solar before insurance companies start to have a lot of hard questions and rate increases. In tens of thousands of connections, it doesn't take a high failure rate on components before you've got something high resistance.
- vasco 4y ago
  And if you have to evacuate a huge warehouse even once a year due to these fires, it immediately is not worth it for the operator.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    Could you elaborate? I feel like I’m missing something significant. I am imagining people file out, then file back in a few hours later, which seems harmless-ish.
    - scohesc 4y ago
      I would assume downtime in terms of "we're paying all these warehouse workers to stand outside - now we have to send them home and the warehouse is unusable, we don't know if the product inside is salvageable due to potential water damage, etc. etc." Probably a lot easier on the business risk side of things to not have solar on the roof because then the risk for a fire is massively reduced in the first place.
      - vasco 4y ago
        Exactly this. Depending on the size of the operation the financial impact of a single day of delay might offset savings from many years. Specially when you could've put solar somewhere else other than on top of your huge warehouse, if you own a huge warehouse.
epistasis 4y ago
Everybody I know that used Tesla for solar regrets it. Cheap stuff, but you end up paying for it in the end.
- bufferoverflow 4y ago
  When we installed solar, Tesla's was the most expensive out of all the proposals. Their solar roof looks very very cool, but it's definitely not "cheap stuff".
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Never heard of anything like that, but most of my experience is from 2+ years ago. Is your install recent? Are you sure they were equivalent proposals? If you add storage, that's no longer just solar, and their storage offerings are far more expensive than others. I couldn't find a local solar installer that wanted to use the type of cheap inverters that Tesla wanted to use. My neighbor has to have Tesla come out about once a year to fix issues.
  - Syonyk 4y ago
    Tesla has two solar products. Don't confuse them. The first is the "solar roof" sort of thing that... we'll see how maintainable it is, but you get to write a properly large check for it, and most of the people I know with it have a couple Powerwalls, and are quite adverse to sharing any sort of actual pricing on it, muttering about "Well, wife acceptance factor" and "But it'll be worth it in power outages..." and such. In other words, almost certainly north of $5/W, and they likely didn't get an itemized invoice of materials/labor/etc. Tesla also, in some markets, has a "standard solar panel" offering that typically comes in around $2.50/W, give or take, and... well, you get what you pay for, typically. It ranges from "decent and a good deal" to "a hot mess," and you've no idea what you're going to get ahead of time. ... and then there are people like me who have sub-$1.50/W installs (DIY). Mine came in around there, but after figuring out how to optimize it better, a neighbor's build came in around $1/W for a 21kW system. //EDIT: And, yes, it takes a lot of learning to do. Cross that with the tens of thousands of dollars saved, I think it's well worth the hassle.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
travisporter 4y ago
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/06/11/amazon-warehouse-fire-linked-to-solar-installation/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/06/11/amazon-warehouse-fire... I think it’s linked to installation. Some sources say they didn’t remove them after the fires
8bitsrule 4y ago
"Late last year, while CEA was still conducting its inspections, it informed Amazon of one critical and 259 major findings across Amazon's rooftop solar portfolio. Problems included mismatched module-to-module connectors, improper installation of connectors, poor wire management and evidence of water intrusion in the inverters, internal documents said. " That's not a solar problem, that's an installer problem. Clearly you need to have well-qualified people doing and regularly inspecting the installing, just as you would with any type of large-scale infrastructure. Bridges also collapse when they're not inspected, airplanes fall out of the sky.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Clearly we should apply nuclear plant level standards to these installations. That would solve these issues and remove much of the danger.
moistoreos 4y ago
The quality of solar tech varies immensely and it will likely take regulation to address some of these issues. But I do not think this is the primary concern here. We put solar on our house and did some pretty rigorous research into the tech precisely because of this concern. After spending many nights/hours understanding the tech in this industry, I can confidently say it matters less about the current generation of solar tech. But, while the degree of quality in solar products exist, what really matters are the contractors that install it. I did not read the articles and I don't want to claim that there's direct causation by contractors, but if I were a betting man, I'd easily put money on the quality of the installation as opposed to the actual tech provided.

Syonyk 4y ago

I've no idea why you're being downvoted, because it is a very real issue. You don't have to burn down many warehouses with solar before insurance companies start to have a lot of hard questions and rate increases. In tens of thousands of connections, it doesn't take a high failure rate on components before you've got something high resistance.

vasco 4y ago
And if you have to evacuate a huge warehouse even once a year due to these fires, it immediately is not worth it for the operator.
- tomcam 4y ago
  Could you elaborate? I feel like I’m missing something significant. I am imagining people file out, then file back in a few hours later, which seems harmless-ish.
  - scohesc 4y ago
    I would assume downtime in terms of "we're paying all these warehouse workers to stand outside - now we have to send them home and the warehouse is unusable, we don't know if the product inside is salvageable due to potential water damage, etc. etc." Probably a lot easier on the business risk side of things to not have solar on the roof because then the risk for a fire is massively reduced in the first place.
    - vasco 4y ago
      Exactly this. Depending on the size of the operation the financial impact of a single day of delay might offset savings from many years. Specially when you could've put solar somewhere else other than on top of your huge warehouse, if you own a huge warehouse.

epistasis 4y ago

Everybody I know that used Tesla for solar regrets it. Cheap stuff, but you end up paying for it in the end.

bufferoverflow 4y ago
When we installed solar, Tesla's was the most expensive out of all the proposals. Their solar roof looks very very cool, but it's definitely not "cheap stuff".
- epistasis 4y ago
  Never heard of anything like that, but most of my experience is from 2+ years ago. Is your install recent? Are you sure they were equivalent proposals? If you add storage, that's no longer just solar, and their storage offerings are far more expensive than others. I couldn't find a local solar installer that wanted to use the type of cheap inverters that Tesla wanted to use. My neighbor has to have Tesla come out about once a year to fix issues.
- Syonyk 4y ago
  Tesla has two solar products. Don't confuse them. The first is the "solar roof" sort of thing that... we'll see how maintainable it is, but you get to write a properly large check for it, and most of the people I know with it have a couple Powerwalls, and are quite adverse to sharing any sort of actual pricing on it, muttering about "Well, wife acceptance factor" and "But it'll be worth it in power outages..." and such. In other words, almost certainly north of $5/W, and they likely didn't get an itemized invoice of materials/labor/etc. Tesla also, in some markets, has a "standard solar panel" offering that typically comes in around $2.50/W, give or take, and... well, you get what you pay for, typically. It ranges from "decent and a good deal" to "a hot mess," and you've no idea what you're going to get ahead of time. ... and then there are people like me who have sub-$1.50/W installs (DIY). Mine came in around there, but after figuring out how to optimize it better, a neighbor's build came in around $1/W for a 21kW system. //EDIT: And, yes, it takes a lot of learning to do. Cross that with the tens of thousands of dollars saved, I think it's well worth the hassle.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

travisporter 4y ago

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/06/11/amazon-warehouse-fire-linked-to-solar-installation/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/06/11/amazon-warehouse-fire... I think it’s linked to installation. Some sources say they didn’t remove them after the fires

8bitsrule 4y ago

"Late last year, while CEA was still conducting its inspections, it informed Amazon of one critical and 259 major findings across Amazon's rooftop solar portfolio. Problems included mismatched module-to-module connectors, improper installation of connectors, poor wire management and evidence of water intrusion in the inverters, internal documents said. " That's not a solar problem, that's an installer problem. Clearly you need to have well-qualified people doing and regularly inspecting the installing, just as you would with any type of large-scale infrastructure. Bridges also collapse when they're not inspected, airplanes fall out of the sky.

Ekaros 4y ago
Clearly we should apply nuclear plant level standards to these installations. That would solve these issues and remove much of the danger.

moistoreos 4y ago

The quality of solar tech varies immensely and it will likely take regulation to address some of these issues. But I do not think this is the primary concern here. We put solar on our house and did some pretty rigorous research into the tech precisely because of this concern. After spending many nights/hours understanding the tech in this industry, I can confidently say it matters less about the current generation of solar tech. But, while the degree of quality in solar products exist, what really matters are the contractors that install it. I did not read the articles and I don't want to claim that there's direct causation by contractors, but if I were a betting man, I'd easily put money on the quality of the installation as opposed to the actual tech provided.