[RE-wrenches] California State Fire Marshal's "Solar Photovoltaic Installation Guidelines"

[Dan Fink]

Andrew;
To call firefighting an "industry" is a bit specious, as almost 70% of
firefighters in the USA are volunteers who are not paid for their time,
with yearly departmental budgets often less than the cost of a
moderately-sized PV install.

No technique or technology has yet been discovered that is effective as
rooftop ventilation for making a building safe enough to enter to attack
and extinguish a fire. I cover some of these in PV Installer / Firefighter
outreach classes, which are always lively. Contact me off-list for more
details. Yes, we can use PPV, CAFS, CAFS grenades etc. but these are only
effective in certain situations and most small fire departments do not have
these capabilities.

The bottom line is that if the building cannot be ventilated and entered
safely for a direct attack, we won't do it. We'll use an indirect attack
from outside and protect the exposures instead. That's not quite "let it
burn" but that's the jist.... That's really bad for the PV industry, too.

Eventually I hope some compromise can be reached.

Dan Fink,
(Firefighter since 1998)
Executive Director;
Buckville Energy Consulting
NABCEP / IREC accredited Continuing Education Providers
970.672.4342




On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 1:13 PM, Solar Energy Solutions <
solarenergysolutions at yahoo.com> wrote:

>   <https://us-mg0.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.rand=5kojk045gpsqg#>
> Today at 11:41 AM
> Dear colleagues,
>
> Rooftop real estate available for solar is of unparalleled and monumental
> importance.  As we head into our 6th great extinction the solar industry
> needs to fight tooth and nail to gain 100% access to every inch of
> available roof space.  The fire fighting industry needs to adapt to
> solar, NOT vice versa.
>
> In Oregon, one person, myself, stopped the 12 person BCD committee from
> adopting the anti solar 3 foot pathway around solar arrays.  The committee
> would not listen to reason.  I went to the governors office saying and
> showing that if the Cal. Guidelines were adopted as code 100% of the roofs
> we had installed systems on would be 100%illegal and unviable.
>
>
>
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