Rescue Safe Solar

The problem

Rescue personnel are faced with serious risks when working with damaged solar panels. The risk of electrocution leads to an inability to make-safe a property during a disaster, which results in significant damage (that could have been avoided).

What happens during an emergency

In an emergency situation, when rescue personnel turn up to a property, the power supply needs to be isolated. For traditional grid connected properties, the mains can be isolated at the circuit board and a utility representative can be called upon to further isolate the property at the power pole.

In the case of a property with solar panels, power is also generated on the roof- it comes from inside the property. While the inverter can be isolated from the solar panels, the solar panels will always be generating power and the wiring leading down to the isolation switch will always be live while the sun is hitting the panels.

There is currently no equivalent of a grid representative who can be called upon to assess and isolate the situation.

As a result it is not safe for safety workers to access a property with solar panels and they are generally informed to leave it alone. This is a liability that not many property owners are aware of.

The gap

The risks are real. Solutions exist. However, there's a gap in communication and awareness between stakeholders, which leads to a lack of action.

What we're doing

There are solutions that mitigate the risk to rescue workers, such as Pvstop an opaque spray that blocks sunlight. There are also devices that can be retrofitted to unprotected PV arrays, such as Solar Safety ShutOff. Surprisingly though, despite the long term availability of these products, they are largely unknown among the emergency services.

Rescue Safe Solar will help key stakeholders establish a platform that:

Consolidates information in the clean energy disaster resilience space that is rescue safe renewables
Provides a hub to generate future innovations in renewables and disaster resilience
Enables a round table collaboration with multiple stakeholders

Outcome summary

Rescue Safe Solar improves disaster resilience by creating:

Safer houses
Safer emergency services
Connectedness
Increased confidence in solar

How we built it

Create a platform pilot through collaboration with these stakeholders:

Government
Clean Energy Council
Insurance Council of Australia

Challenges we ran into

It's a big problem, and demands a big solution
Combating perceptions that stakeholders may have such as "too hard" or "can't be done"
Working out how to implement a solution without derailing public perceptions of solar

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're rather proud of:

Rescue Safe Solar that as a platform, in unison, improves the safety of rescue personnel and the community impact from property damage.
We've engaged buy-in with some key stakeholders already (SES, Clean Energy Council, and the inventor of Remote Solar Isolator)