One in five solar roof panels substandard: inspector
One in five roof-top solar panel installations in Australia are substandard and four per cent unsafe, figures collected by the official regulator show, according to The Australian.
A Senate estimates committee heard the official regulator’s inspection of 1841 panels up to the end of January immediately shut down four in one hundred panels.
The office of the Renewable Energy Regulator’s Andrew Livingston told the hearing 1368 inspections were slated for the rest of the year, The Australian reports.
Some installers had been suspended by state regulators over the findings, he said.
Meanwhile, government representatives told the hearing Canberra was in negotiations with debt collectors over the recovery of $21 million inappropriately claimed by installers under the federal solar panel home installation scheme.
Comments on this article
Substandard Solar Installations
I have some experience of this. My 3kW system was inspected in late 2010, and a number of defects were noted, which needed rectification to avoid disconnection from the mains supply.
All work was remedied at considerable expense to the installer. So far is I can tell, none of the defects were unsafe, and were pretty trivial.
The most common "defect" was the placement of various items (meter board/circuit breakers etc) more than the prescribed height above ground level, and were in fact more to do with OHS issues for meter readers or emergency personnel (I kid you not).
It was acknowleged that one of these had been compliant at the time of installation, but a new standard had subsequently been introduced, so it needed fixing too.
Needless to say, my original 80-year old power board which the new system replaced would have failed the current standards dismally.
Clarification
The regulations, CEC guidelines and Australian Standards surrounding solar pv installations are massive documents and in many cases conforming to them is an exercise in interpretation. To illustrate this point I am reliably informed that in June last year one Inspector in Perth found a non-conformance in every installation he visited. For sure some installations may genuinly have issues, but a fraction of all electrical installations, solar or otherwise would fall into this catagory. In my opinion the safety of solar systems is way better than downlights, old wiring and many other electrical hazzards in the house. I don't want to diminish the bad work done by cowboys but let's put this into perspective.
4 percent unsafe ? => One in twenty five installations unsafe ?
4 percent unsafe ? => One in twenty five installations unsafe ?
Unsafe solar panels
Yes Arno pity about the maths. But what I would like to know is who are these unscrupulous installers. Their names and addresses ought to be published on the web an newspapers so that others can avoid the problems.
Lies, damn lies and "Australian" headings
"One in five panels unsafe" says the headline. One in 25 says the article with one in five "substandard", whatever that means. Honesty in reporting? Oh yes I remember, it's about selling papers....