Solar Panel Grounding Requirements

The following sections of our solar panel installation guide outline grounding methods and some extra tips to help you ground your system properly.

Solar panel grounding requirements.

When installing a solar photo voltaic system pv it is extremely important all the equipment is grounded correctly. Where the ground may be dry especially sandy or where lightning may be particularly severe more rods should be installed at least 10 feet apart. There are three main reasons for grounding in an off grid power system. To be clear we are always floating the leads of the solar panels never tie panel lead to earth ground other through a dc surge protector if used.

There are two types of ground. Safety v oltage transients and t h e sheer fact that they are required for some loads. Egc and gec grounding egc equipment grounding conductor is the green or bare copper wire that connects the racking hardware metal enclosures and emt conduit together. Nec 690 defines electrical safety requirements for pv systems.

When you re installing a solar panel system it is extremely important to ground your solar arrays and your equipment. Minimal grounding is provided by a copper plated ground rod usually 8 ft. He is a member of the underwriters laboratories standards technical panels for pv modules inverters racks and direct current pv arc fault interrupters. From a lightning control point of view there is probably little reason to connect a 6 awg cable from the mount ground rod 100 to the house ground rod after the fact.

Bonding and grounding pv systems ensures public safety as well as the safety of pv installers and field electricians said andy zwit codes and standards manager at ilsco. This paper addresses the requirements for pv system grounding contained in the. Structure as equipment grounding conductor. Exposed non current carrying metal parts of pv module frames electrical equipment and conductor enclosures must be grounded.

National electrical code. Even if you seldom have electrical storms all it takes is one lightning strike or a single lose wire and all the. But before we address each of these it s important to understand the actual definition of ground. Snapnrack uses grounding lugs that are installed throughout each string of the system to act as a protector for each panel in that string.

Long driven into the earth. Failure to ground the entire system to include all the individual pieces can be devastating especially in an area that experiences lightning on a regular basis. Chassis or mechanical and electrical. This double grounding will ensure that even if something were to go wrong with the grounding at the inverter level your solar panels will remain safe.

Devices listed and identified for grounding the metal frames of solar modules or other equipment can bond. If you experience a large amount of lightening storms in your area failure to ground your solar system could result in damages to your product.