2023-07-29 18:53:56
The fire on the roof of a villa in Chevroux (VD) in early July raises questions in Broye. The damage was caused by the photovoltaic installation integrated into the roof. This rare case does not worry the insurance companies but, questioned at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, the installer takes it seriously.
It is 4 p.m. on Thursday July 6 when the roof of the villa, empty at that time, of the Demierre family bursts into flames. The alert is launched by the neighbors. Firefighters save the house, but not its roof.
Michel Demierre is still in shock: “We have to rebuild everything… It’s hard to see as images. The roof is symbolic, it’s our refuge and there the solar panels catch fire, we no longer feel safe.”
The photovoltaic installation, which he chose to integrate into the roof during construction 5 years ago, is the cause of the accident. The director of Soleol, the company that installed these panels, immediately went to the site.
Risk of overheating
The founder of the Staviacoise company, Jean-Louis Guillet, takes the matter seriously. “Zero risk does not exist, it’s isolated, exceptional cases, which are part of the risk of the job. What matters is how we react when there is a problem.”
It will advise once morest the installation of these panels integrated into the roof in the future. A solution considered more elegant but which overheats more for lack of ventilation space, and which produces less when it is over 25 degrees. He promises to control the hundred or so similar installations at his customers’, a small minority of the 30,000 installations made in 15 years by this company.
No Swiss statistics
In Switzerland, there are no detailed statistics or systematic investigation of these claims. In the eyes of insurance companies, the risk of a photovoltaic system catching fire is no greater than the risk of any other household electrical appliance burning out.
“We do not have reliable elements for the canton of Vaud which make it possible to highlight the proven or increased risk in the integrated panels. But what we can highlight is that the distances to the insulators fuels are important to take into account. The farther you are from the framework, the further you are from the fuel elements and the less risk there is of propagation to these elements”, specifies Stéphane Farrugia, technical manager for prevention operations at ECA.
Need to know the exact cause
While 16,000 panels are installed every working day in Switzerland, the former director of the Photovoltaic Laboratory of the Bern University of Applied Sciences insists on the need to clarify the cause of each accident, however rare it may be.
“An international study was able to show that an integrated installation is twenty times more likely to start burning than an installation placed above the roof”, he reports.
Michel Demierre didn’t know anything regarding it and was unlucky. Panels, he will have some reinstalled but above his roof, this time.
>> On the same subject: see the subject of A Bon Entendeur on a bad experience of an individual with these photovoltaic panels: Photovoltaic panels to pay less electricity: the story of a bad experience / A good hearer / 6 mins. / July 4, 2023
Carole Pantet / juma
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