Fire a major hidden danger for solar farms

Fire is one of the oldest and most omnipresent risks businesses face and is potentially one of the most devastating. Any business worth its salt has adequate fire safety measures and insurance in place.

However, in many emerging industries, risks are often harder to measure, leading to exposures and losses. One such industry is solar energy, which has been growing rapidly in recent years due to the shift to renewable energy.

A recent report by Firetrace International found that the solar industry is potentially underestimating the risk of fire at solar farms, partly due to a shortage of data on solar farm fires. The report also said that research into the issue has given rise to suspicions that fires at solar farms have been under-reported.

“To be clear, fire risk is present across all utility scale, high voltage, renewable energy from wind to solar to battery storage systems,” Ross Paznokas (pictured above), global business development manager, clean energy at Firetrace International, told Corporate Risk and Insurance. “Fire risks cannot be totally engineered out.

“With the expected exponential growth of renewable energy as well as aging infrastructure, the number of fire occurrences will only increase. One thing that operators tend to overlook is addressing these fire risks with fire mitigation strategies. Often, owners will simply rely on their insurance provider to cover a loss, if that does occur, rather than implementing the likes of fire suppression technology.”

According to Paznokas, solar asset owners and major OEMs are reluctant to discuss or publicly acknowledge a loss attributable to fire. This means that there is a lack of data and definitive case studies to draw insights from.

With regard to data that is actually available, Paznokas said that the US Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office cited a study conducted by European testing and certification company TÜV Rheinland, titled Assessing Fire Risks in Photovoltaic Systems and Developing Safety Concepts for Risk Minimization. The study found that in approximately half of 430 cases of fire or heat damage in photovoltaic (PV) systems, the PV system itself was considered the “cause or probable cause.”

Meanwhile, a study conducted by the BRE National Solar Centre found that more than a quarter of fires involving solar power systems were caused by the photovoltaics and those fires were all “serious fires,”meaning fires that were “difficult to extinguish and spread beyond the area of origin.”

“Unfortunately, solar farm infrastructure is not just sitting in a warehouse and can have long lead times, which can result in degradation as parts move through the supply chain,” Paznokas said. “There have been numerous solar farm fires ranging from Argentina to the USA and in Europe. In each of these cases, the affected companies have found themselves with hundreds of thousands worth of losses. Accumulated losses come from destroyed equipment anywhere near the fire and lost production for extended periods due to waiting for replacement parts, construction, and recommissioning. In our work, we have seen solar farm fires result in losses which encompass the entire solar farm with the potential to spread and endanger surrounding communities.”

The Firetrace study highlighted three major causes of solar farm fires. These are an error in the system design, a faulty product (a design or quality issue), and poor installation practices. Among components, DC isolators pose the highest fire risk, being involved in the outbreak of around 30% of studied fires. Other components that are likely to cause a fire are DC connectors and inverters.

To minimize the risk of solar farm fires, Firetrace and TÜV Rheinland recommended the following steps:

Ensure solar systems are regularly tested by independent third parties
Incorporate additional safety components everywhere possible
Create standardized quality assurance measures
Ensure defective or prematurely aged components are promptly replaced

In the future, as the risk of fire becomes clearer for operators of solar energy facilities, Paznokas predicts that the industry will become more proactive in managing fire risks.

“As is the case with all maturing industries, we feel as though the solar farm industry will embrace the installation of fire suppression systems in the areas of the modules which can be protected,” he said. “Additionally, we will begin to see original equipment manufacturers of these key components offering fire suppression fully integrated into their systems from the factory. This will not only address owner and investor concerns, but also help communities understand how safe and affordable systems can benefit the entire area through their provision of cheap, reliable energy.”