[RE-wrenches] Panel Fire

[Ken Schaal]

Amazing how this ' stuff ' just bounces around--Note the ' for more info' box at the bottom of the examiner article.
It's the Fire Link.com story wrenches discussed last week-----------

Ken

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Michael Welch 
  To: 'RE-wrenches' 
  Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 9:48 PM
  Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] Panel Fire


  This seems corroborating. It has GOT to be the same situation:
  http://www.examiner.com/x-432-Wedding-and-Marriage-Examiner~y2009m2d10-Our-wedding-anniversary-like-a-house-on-fire-literally

  Search the page for "solar" to get to the crux of it, and .

  P.S. Tempered glass won't melt, but clear plastic goop poured over the top of silicon cells (which can be seen littering the roof) will melt. These are probably homemade modules. What I see on the charred roof is consistent with plastic encapsulated modules burning and melting. Also, the racking is consistent with the first pre-fire photo.

  These poor folks really got taken to the cleaners by their "installer" which MUST BE STOPPED.

  Brian Sipp wrote at 06:17 PM 2/11/2009:
   

    I may be very wrong here and I donâ?Tt mean to impugn anyoneâ?Ts integrity, but donâ?Tt forget that in this era of digital animation movies you canâ?Tt always believe what you see in a photo either. (I'm sure no one here has ever Photoshopped a photo to make it more presentable looking.)  I couldn't help but notice that the bottom right corner of the photo was surprisingly blurry and indistinct.  It is difficult to distinguish one thing from the next, when just a few feet away but out of the range of detail in the photo, things seemed to be much clearer.  Iâ?Tve never seen a photo look like that in reality.  Itâ?Ts as if the roof and array have mysteriously melted together.  Also, I have never seen tempered glass melt in a low temperature fire.  If it were a high temperature fire the roof would not have survived.  I think that a great deal of caution is warranted especially considering the lack of detail that the poster is giving about the panels, location, installer/supplier, existence of another array etc.

    --- On Wed, 2/11/09, Allan Sindelar <allan at positiveenergysolar.com> wrote: 
      From: Allan Sindelar <allan at positiveenergysolar.com> 
      Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] Panel Fire 
      To: "'RE-wrenches'" <re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org> 
      Date: Wednesday, February 11, 2009, 12:57 PM

      One detail I haven't heard mentioned yet and am curious about - the photo of the fire damage appears to show the corner of another west(?)-facing array. I find it curious that the system owner described a 2 kW system made up of eight 250W(!) modules, which are clearly visible in the topmost system photo. 
       
      There's just a whole lot that doesn't jive in this whole story. Scary to me. 
      Allan at + NRG 


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