Essay by Eric Worrall
Last year, Amazon was forced to take all of its solar panels offline, after the panels caused six separate fire and explosion incidents. Amazon blamed third-party installers for the problems.
Amazon took all US solar rooftops offline last year after a series of fires, electrical explosions
PUBLISHED, SEP 1 202212: 10 PM EDTUPDATED 60 MINUTES AGE
Annie Palmer@ANNIERPALMER
Lora Kolodny@LORAKOLODNYBetween April 2020 and June 2021, solar panels atop Amazon fulfillment centers caught fire or experienced electrical outbursts at least six different times.
“The rate of hazardous incidents is unacceptable and above the industry average,” an Amazon employee wrote in an internal report seen by CNBC.
Rooftop solar is part of Amazon’s broader plan to eliminate emissions by 2040.
On the afternoon of April 14, 2020, dozens of firefighters arrived at a Amazon warehouse in Fresno, California, as thick plumes of smoke rose from the roof of the 880,000-square-foot warehouse.
About 220 solar panels and other equipment at the facility, known as FAT1, were damaged by the triple alarm fire, which was caused by “an unknown electrical event in the energy system”. Roof mounted sun,” Leland Wilding, Fresno, fire investigator, wrote in an incident report.
More than a year later, about 60 firefighters were called to an even larger Amazon facility in Perryville, Maryland, to extinguish two alarms, local news store report.
In recent months, at least four other Amazon fulfillment centers have caught fire or experienced fire problems due to failures in their solar generation systems, according to internal company documents seen by CNBC.
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Amazon blames its partners and third-party vendors for the most significant problems discovered by the CEA and other groups working on facilities and sustainability initiatives.
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Rooftop solar can be unsafe.
Solar panels are low voltage high amperage devices, similar to the low voltage component of electric arc welding machines. Any installation or structural failure can cause 10 seconds, even hundreds of amps, to go where it’s not.
Solar panels are also usually mounted on an aluminum frame.
Aluminum has several attractive characteristics, it is cheap, easy to drill and cut, lightweight, reduces or eliminates the need to reinforce existing roof supports, and resists corrosion.
But aluminum also has some significant downsides. Aluminum has a very low melting point, it melts at around 1200F, much lower than the melting point of other common structural metals like steel. Aluminum is a good conductor of electricity, so it can carry and is likely to be weakened or completely melted by the current flowing from high amperage solar panels, although Aluminum is also a conductor. excellent heat, can minimize the risk of melting. Aluminum is also susceptible to salt or galvanic corrosion, as any boat owner knows. Salt, electricity and aluminum are a bad mix, and even small stray currents can cause rapid oxidation and structural destruction. Desert dust and sea breezes often contain a lot of salt.
Worst of all, hot aluminum can form dangerous, difficult to extinguish flammable temperature mixture burns at many thousands of degrees with a variety of structural oxides, such as titanium oxideIt is a miracle pigment in heat-reflecting paints, rusty steel, some roofing materials, and glass.
I don’t know if the chemical ability of electrically heated aluminum to form high-temperature combustible mixtures with a variety of normally unburnt structural materials is a factor in roof fires solar-powered homes or not, but this seems a real possibility.
My question – if a big company like Amazon can’t get the installers to do their job right, what hope do ordinary people have? Time will tell if insurers start adding “rooftop solar” premiums to household policies. At the very least, everyone who wants to install solar panels should review whether the material on their roof can form a temperature-hazardous mixture with the solar panel frame.
Update (EW): The following video is Aluminum mixed with internal wall putty creating a white hot flame.
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