Jay Leno talks about installing solar on his house (which he did himself) and commenting that he was getting shocked a lot, bc as soon as the PVs are in the sun, they're making electricity. He said it made handling the units tricky.
BTW: installing solar panels DIY is apparently super easy, as I found out. I have a flat roof and used micro inverters, to make it easier, but I was done in less than a day (excluding selecting the components and layout)
I just installed 7.3Kw on my roof, and another 600W on the roof of my Jeep.
You'd have to physically stick a screwdriver into an MC-4 connector to get zapped, which is as smart as sticking one into an electrical outlet.
I don't even understand how you could get zapped plugging in MC-4 connectors.... like, at all.
What happens to a PV panel, receiving sunlight, with no load?
Does it degrade or suffer ill effects in any meaningful way? Or does it just have a potential between its outputs but otherwise isn't impacted?
At least in Germany, every PV installation of certain size (> 30kW peak) is mandated to be able to be shutdown remotely by the carrier if you supply electricity for the net and aren't just using it for yourself. (You get paid the same during shutdowns, just like it were running. Otherwise it would be quite damaging and likely reduce adoption of PV)
Point being: no, it doesn't hurt the panels and is a regular ocurence.
Which means that in winter, probably nothing, because it's cold, but on a hot summer day with peak sun, the heat might start damaging the cells. How much exactly you'd have to look at studies.
My guess is the output will permanently degrade by a few % per year if the panel is not connected. Might go down to 80% way quicker than normal (25-yr)
Solar panels are not constant-power devices. In an open circuit, they will generate their open circuit voltage at nearly zero current (except minor internal leakage), and thus nearly zero power. In a short circuit, they will generate nearly zero voltage, and thus also nearly zero power. To get maximum power out of a solar panel requires maximum power-point tracking (MPPT), where the load is adjusted such that the product of voltage and current (that is, power) is optimized for the current conditions; while significant power can be delivered to a fixed load, there's no real power being generated without a load.
Alternately, power can be expressed as V^2/R. But in an open circuit R is infinite, so again, zero power.
So as long as manufacturers engineer their panels to be tolerant of the maximum heat at a site (i.e. full sun, maximum temperature), the panels won't be harmed in any meaningful way. They'll just heat up a bit faster than if they were providing current.
PV panels are just like charged capacitor or a chemical battery with no loads: just holding unused potential differences with no damage to the unit.
And since heat radiates away at temperature to the fourth power, the increase shouldn't be particularly much.