What is recommended way to ground a ground mount solar array?

[Nobodybusiness]

That’s either a big ass farm or a commercial structure.

I have never seen a home with multiple feeds from a transformer..

You're right it's a farm. One meter for business use and one for "personal". 10 different structures.

That makes more sense.

You probably are under different standards than a regular home.

 

[onokai]

my array is ground mounted with metal (uni-struts) and wood supports in metal simpson strong ties in cement sono tubes-no metal to panels to ground connections. No electronics as well on array. I bonded with bare #8 copper each panel and drove a 8 foot ground rod under array and made the connection to copper wire. That is about 80 feet from outbuilding with sol arc in it. Sol arc is grounded and has seperate neutral to a 100 amp subpanel in outbuilding. Neutrals and grounds are separated in sol arc as they are in in sub panel.
The array grounding is for rare lighting strikes (we just had one a few minutes ago) as they are pretty rare here.
seems this gounding issue is never settled with solar

 

[Cory V]

No one is getting shocked by an electrical system because they walked into an area between 2 rods that were properly grounded. Electricity takes the easiest path to ground. If you're not it, you're not getting shocked.
You are more likely to get shocked by a poorly grounded system . A bad connection between the egc and the rod can get people hurt.

Electricity doesn’t take the easiest path to ground. It takes the easiest path back to the source to complete the circuit. Lightning takes the easiest path to ground (earth).

Ground and neutral can only be bonded once, at the first disconnect at the service entrance, typically the main panel. They are bonded specifically to give ground faults (leaking current) an easy path back to the source neutral, which creates a “short” that will trip the over current protection device and “clear the fault.”

 

[LywWyr]

Electricity doesn’t take the easiest path to ground. It takes the easiest path back to the source to complete the circuit. Lightning takes the easiest path to ground (earth).

Ground and neutral can only be bonded once, at the first disconnect at the service entrance, typically the main panel. They are bonded specifically to give ground faults (leaking current) an easy path back to the source neutral, which creates a “short” that will trip the over current protection device and “clear the fault.”

Electricity will take the easiest path to ground. If that path is the grounding conductor fine , if it a short or direct path to ground that's another. Taking the easiest path to ground and tripping the breaker or fuse are 2 different things.

 

[Cory V]

Electricity will take the easiest path to ground. If that path is the grounding conductor fine , if it a short or direct path to ground that's another. Taking the easiest path to ground and tripping the breaker or fuse are 2 different things.

Electricity will always take the easiest path to complete the circuit. For utility power at a residence the transformer just before the service entrance is the source. In order for current to flow a circuit must be created either between either ends of the winding to the center tapped neutral or together (split phase is 240v L1-L2 or 120 L-N). Unless this circuit is created current won’t flow. Even ground faults are only using earth as a means for current to flow back to the transformer as the center tapped neutral is also bonded to earth ground for lightning protection, however there’s usually enough resistance through earth that not enough current would flow to trip the breaker causing an electrocution hazard. Only lightning is specifically trying to get to the earth. Per NEC the grounding conductor is meant to allow a path back to the source, not earth which is the entire reason for the ground/neutral bond in the main panel as the neutral is what completes the circuit. “Grounding” rods are there to give an easy path for lightning to exit the electrical system. This is also why each structure requires its own grounding rod.

 

[LywWyr]

This is all true, but if you have an ungrounded electrical panel and you introduce a short to ground current will still flow to ground. This is what makes an improperly grounded system so dangerous.

 

[Kapow_Network]

Here Will discusses grounding for an offgrid system:

 

[networksguy]

I'm installing a ground mount system with ground screws that have been "rock" drilled because it's all on ledge. I don't think I'll have any luck putting in a grounding rod. Will the steel screws in to the ledge provide grounding?

 

[McLovin]

I have a totally off-grid system I've been building (NO utilities) in southern Colorado, USA.
The solar arrays are ground mounted (IronRidge) and about 125 linear feet from the garage where the inverters and batteries are located.
The garage is connected to my home with a 20 foot breezeway.
That said, I'm putting two grounding rods, 6 feet apart and connected to the two arrays by 4awg copper wires. Only PV wires run from the arrays to the garage inverters. In the garage the inverters will back feed their AC power to a Sub Panel with a separate breaker for each inverter (4 - EG4 120v). From their they will be combined into two legs (L1 and L2) along with the combing all neutral and all grounding wires into larger wires fed to the main house panel (single N, G, L1 & L2).
Since grounding rods are supposed to be attached by grounding wire to the "service entrance" panel, then in my Off-Grid case that would be the sub-panel, so I will feed two additional grounding rods from there, neutral/ground bonding will be done at the sub-panel. In a grid tied home, you would normally do the neutral/ground bond in the main house panel since that is where the service normally comes in.

I hope this helps.

 

[RLM4JC]

My understanding is the DC and AC grounding are separate. I am building my array's now after trenching and am in the planning phase for grounding my two arrays. Speaking on the DC side only for my eg4 britemounts which are about 175 feet away from my sol-ark 15k, my assumption is that the arrays are to be grounded at the array location only?