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Comment by piotrkaminski | Hacker News Reader

Citation? It's not intuitive why that should happen -- potential short-circuits?

In Australia we have a large amount of rooftop solar. We used to fit isolation switches near the panels on the roofs so that we could de-energise as much wiring as possible in the case of a fire.

The stats showed that the rooftop isolation switches shorting out was the leading cause of fires. We no longer fit them.

From https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/11/16/a-guide-to-addressing...

"More than 90% of inspected rooftops had significant safety and fire risks. Here’s how to protect your solar asset."

Lots of bad wiring. Get a 3rd party inspector.

Interesting and useful -- thanks. My understanding is that, at least for residential installations, the city sends an inspector to check things before you're allowed to turn the system on. This would appear to avoid the first-party inspector issues identified in the article, but are the city inspectors sufficiently "strict" or should I hire my own for peace of mind?

I saw one non-solar project where the city inspector seemed to be friends with the electrical contractor. They spent 20 minutes shooting the breeze, then the inspector did a super-fast scan of things, signed off, and left.

May be best to watch the inspector do the inspection?

A certain amount of searching should be required before forcing homework onto others. You can literally google "risk of fire increases with roof-mounted solar panels" and you will see it from tons of sources including pv-magazine and others.

"Citation?", "[Citation]", "Citation Needed" - these all bother me when the research is literally just copy/paste/search.

If you are going to make a claim, you should back it up with citations. [1]

[1] https://guides.lib.uw.edu/research/citations/citationwhat

You’re putting an electrical system where there wasn’t one before. It’d be surprising if there wasn’t an increased risk.

More electrical systems in your house means more risk of fire.

Arguments presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. The person making a claim is the one required to back up their argument - not forcing homework on everyone who reads their unbaked argument to find evidence for your claims.

Interesting point, but I'm going to need a citation for that.

cute

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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