The Fire Risk in Photovoltaic Installations - Test Protocols For Fire Behavior of PV Modules

Abstract The fire risk in the photovoltaic systems has emerged over the years as not negligible, setting in motion a process, which involves various organizations (control Authorities, standardization bodies, modules manufacturers, etc.) for achieving the codification of construction, design and installation of these systems and their components to minimize fire risk. Currently, European standards focused specifically on fire behavior of PV modules don’t exist yet, so test protocols focused on other equipment are used to test PV modules reaction to fire. About that, a research program was carried out to do a short analysis of PV systems fire events, to analyze the current test protocols and for identifying their criticalities and possible improvements. In particular, some variants of these protocols have been developed basing on some of the existing test protocols in standard harmonized at European level about reaction to fire of construction products. These variants have been designed for being specific test tools for determination of reaction to fire features of PV modules with main attention to important peculiarities such as: modules inclination, initial fire particularly aggressive.