[RE-wrenches] Rapid shutdown questions

[Dan Fink]

Dave; I feel your pain as do many others.
I feel like I've been Rick-rolled on the whole 690.12 thing. As a
firefighter, I thought rapid shutdown was a great idea for roof mounted
arrays. Shut down fast from a central location on the ground, get up on the
roof, do what needs to be done, fast and no worries other than the fire
itself.

But disconnects hanging 15 feet in the air? Allowed to mount them in the
attic through a locked door to a disused lavatory behind a file cabinet
labeled "beware of the leopard?" - meets code.
Rapid shutdown for ground mount arrays? Just walk over to the danged thing
and throw the clearly-labeled disconnects, the central signage told you
where they are. Problem solved.
All just plain silly, counterproductive and expensive for the homeowner. As
I work exclusively with off-grid systems, most of them ranging from small
to tiny, I've been seeing their potential client's eyes go wide as dinner
plates when I inform them "By the way, Colorado just adopted NEC 2014, and
it'll be an extra $1500 to comply, sorry that's a 33% increase in your
system cost......"
What's happening in the real world is folks getting the household 120/240
AC wiring signed off as "powered by gasoline generator" and they do the
solar later, and change the gate combo so the inspector can't come back.
Now *that's* counterproductive.

Robin, glad to hear clarifications are coming in 2017.

Dan Fink
Buckville Energy
IREC Certified Instructor™ - PV Installation Professional and Small Wind
Installer
970.672.4342




On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Dave Click <daveclick at fsec.ucf.edu> wrote:

> While I share Robin's optimism, I should also note the "NEC 2017 690.12
> committee" referred to is not the code making panel. While it does have (at
> least) one firefighter representative among a majority of PV industry
> personnel, there's no guarantee that the Code Making Panel approves this
> committee's proposal. There could very well be a competing proposal from
> firefighters that requires cell-level shutdown every time a red truck
> drives within 1/4 mile of an array, because "SAFETY!"
>
> DKC
>
>
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