Lightening protection for PV system with high lightening risk?

[Gavin A]

I'm being lazy, and wondered if anyone had experience of arranging suitable lightening protection for a solar PV system on a house in exposed location where the next door house has previously been hit, but no existing lightening protection system exists?

Got a lot on my plate this week and just found out about this nugget of information about an install next week, so would appreciate any pearls of wisdom.

 

[Earthstore]

Mount it on the house next door.
Lightning does not strike twice (or so they say)

 

[Gary K]

Mount it on the grass near to the house(preferably south side)

 

[UNG]

Contact Furse or A.N. Wallis for advice. The installation of lightning protection can open up a whole new can of worms and create more problems than it solves if you are not careful

 

[DurhamSparky]

the UK is not considered a high risk for lightinng strikes... just install as normal and if it does get hit i dont think a bit of copper will save much

 

[Earthstore]

Make sure you fit a very large inverter, cos boy this will make the generation meter clock up some KWH...

 

[Gavin A]

Contact Furse or A.N. Wallis for advice. The installation of lightning protection can open up a whole new can of worms and create more problems than it solves if you are not careful

I probably wasn't clear, I'm fairly sure there's either string fuses or surge protection for the DC side that's aimed at protecting the inverter from damage, just wondered if anyone had experience of it / knew where I could procure such things, or if I'd imagined it.

if nothing like that exists, I think I'll just tell the customer to contact a lightening protection specialist if they're concerned. May also have to check if their neighbour had anything installed after the strike, if so I doubt we'd have anything to worry about as that'd be the route the lightening would almost certainly take again in future.

Their description of the next door neighbours having an old fish tank explode in the loft along with their TV etc did give me pause for thought though.

 

[pvman]

We have fitted a couple of installs with lightning protection, we used surge protection on the dc before the inverter and additional surge protection on the ac side where it entered the building to protect against nearby strikes. If your interested I'll find details on the supplier in the morning.

The stuff we used was specially for PV

Tom

 

[Gavin A]

Thanks, would appreciate that info if you have the time to find it.

 

[UNG]

Do a google search on solar surge arrestors quite a bit of info there

 

[screwdriver]

some inverters can have them fitted as optional extra, We fitted a power one trio 20 inverter and it had dc and ac replaceable surge protection inside but these things don't protect agains direct hits, that would be down to the LPS outside on the roof and the surge protection generally only helps protect against inducted voltages from nearby hits, but best speak to a proper LPS company to get their opinion for your area, local factors like building heights, landscape etc make a difference .

 

[BruceB]

Ditto with the Tripowers. They can have surge protectors fitted.

If there is a serious risk of lightning, then you will probably need a specialist company.

 

[dansk]

Andy @sibert can help you with this im sure.

 

[pvman]

We used surge protection from phoenixcontact, found them good to deal with, although it was a while ago.

PHOENIX CONTACT | Photovoltaics in agriculture

Phoenix Contact Ltd
Darren
Karen Martin (accts)
01952 681722
01952681700
www.phoenixcontact.co.uk
[email protected]
Halesfield 13, Telford
TF7 4PG

Hope this helps.

The thing to check is how many strings you have as this makes a difference to the protection unit you require.

Tom

 

[SibertSolar]

The modules that you can fit as an option on the Tripower units are Type-2 devices for protection of the DC strings against indirect strikes (induced surge). If there is an existing LPS present, and adequate separation distances are not adhered to, then you would need to fit Type-1 devices per inverter input. The Dehn PV1000 is a combined lightning and surge protection Type-1 SPD and we can provide this pre-wired into a string box (configuration dependent on number of strings etc) if required. AC SPDs can also be provided.

Would suggest you talk to Dehn UK although some info can be found on our website here and I'm always available to help if I can,

Andy