San Francisco Examiner: Solar Changes Rules
In a recent article, the San Francisco Examiner stated that as “part of sweeping changes to The City’s fire code, Fire Marshal Barbara Schultheis wants to adopt statewide standards for solar panel installation in order to keep firefighters safe. Those guidelines are much stricter than current regulations and could make solar installation in San Francisco more difficult.”
The new regulations include installing a bright red sign to alert firefighters that solar panels are present on the roof. No solutions to disarming the energy flow in the panels was considered.
Fire Engineering: The Impact of Solar on Firefighting
Timothy Kreis, writing for Fire Engineering, talks about the impact of solar panels on fire fighting. According to him, “A fire department in California attempted to black out a PV system by using a salvage cover to block out sunlight. The energy created by the system was reduced, but it did not completely block out the sun, and the system still produced enough electricity to shock a potential victim. Firefighters in Germany attempted to cover solar panels with foam to block out the sunlight, with a similar result. Sunlight was able to penetrate through the foam, and the PV system continued to create electrical energy. In this case, the foam kept sliding off the panels.”
His advice under the circumstances? “The bottom line for the fire service is to treat the system as any other electrical equipment and assume it’s energized.”