Firefighter safety for PV systems: Overview of future requirements and protection systems

An important and highly discussed safety issue for photovoltaic systems is that, as long as they are illuminated, a high voltage is present at the PV string terminals and cables between the string and inverters, independent of the state of the inverter´s dc disconnection switch, which poses a risk for operators during maintenance or fire-fighting. One of the solutions is individual module shutdown by short-circuiting or disconnecting each PV module from the PV string. However, currently no standards have been adopted either for implementing or testing these methods, or doing an evaluation of the module shutdown procedures. This paper gives an overview on the most recent fire - and firefighter safety requirements for PV systems, with focus on system and module shutdown systems. Several solutions are presented, analyzed and compared by considering a number of essential characteristics, including their transient behavior, components´ voltage stress and conduction losses.