Consumerbot3418
Fitting square pegs into round holes... for fun?
I can't even believe I'm typing this right now...
I installed a grid-tied Sunny Boy PV system on my in-laws' garage roof, and it's been running perfectly for nearly two years. Recently, the red light on the inverter came on indicating an error: failure in string C.
Not coincidentally, the evening prior, we heard a strange tale about noises on the roof keeping them awake at night. Somehow, a racoon had found itself on their roof, and was making a commotion. The raccoon, deemed a rabies hazard, met its demise at the muzzle of my father-in-law's firearm. About a month earlier, I'd noticed that there was a single PV cable that had worked its way out of a clip, and was dangling below the panels. I knew it needed to be dealt with at some point, but since it wasn't making contact with the roof surface, I didn't prioritize rectifying it.
Fast forward to this morning, when I climbed up on the roof to investigate the error (and get the dangling cable repositioned).
I found this:
My father-in-law's kill shot managed to sever every last strand of conductor in the PV cable. If one or two had remained, I'd imagine it could started a fire when it attempted to conduct 8 amperes of current. Yikes!
(incidentally, the image I've uploaded as my avatar is not me--it was imagined by Dall-E, when prompted for "ridiculously dangerous redneck PV system"
)
I installed a grid-tied Sunny Boy PV system on my in-laws' garage roof, and it's been running perfectly for nearly two years. Recently, the red light on the inverter came on indicating an error: failure in string C.
Not coincidentally, the evening prior, we heard a strange tale about noises on the roof keeping them awake at night. Somehow, a racoon had found itself on their roof, and was making a commotion. The raccoon, deemed a rabies hazard, met its demise at the muzzle of my father-in-law's firearm. About a month earlier, I'd noticed that there was a single PV cable that had worked its way out of a clip, and was dangling below the panels. I knew it needed to be dealt with at some point, but since it wasn't making contact with the roof surface, I didn't prioritize rectifying it.
Fast forward to this morning, when I climbed up on the roof to investigate the error (and get the dangling cable repositioned).
I found this:
My father-in-law's kill shot managed to sever every last strand of conductor in the PV cable. If one or two had remained, I'd imagine it could started a fire when it attempted to conduct 8 amperes of current. Yikes!
(incidentally, the image I've uploaded as my avatar is not me--it was imagined by Dall-E, when prompted for "ridiculously dangerous redneck PV system"
)
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