- Jun 22, 2011
- 1,182
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- If you're a qualified, trainee, or retired electrician - Which country is it that your work will be / is / was aimed at?
- United Kingdom
- What type of forum member are you?
- Electrical Engineer (Qualified)
- Business Name
- Medoria Solar
Here’s a little story which links nicely to a thread in the main forum: http://www.electriciansforums.co.uk...lar-panel-circuit-mcb-size-4.html#post1051091
It was Christmas Eve morning and I was all packed ready to go to visit the family down south. My mobile rang and I saw that it was a customer so I decided to answer.
We had fitted 16 panels (split 10/6) a couple of months previously (in conjunction with a complete re-roof). There was a P1 in the loft as the only viable alternative was putting the inverter outside.
The customer told me his system wasn’t working. The inverter had an error message: “Missing Grid” on the screen.
Fortunately, he lived reasonably close so I decided to visit. The panel voltages were fine and rebooting the inverter showed the same error message. The AC voltage downstairs read 244v but we only had 190v upstairs. There was no visible fault and the terminations were all correct.
It turned out that after we had fitted our system he had had a new gas boiler installed. For some reason, the boiler fitter had drilled a hole about an inch away from our SWA and managed to mangle our cable. There were two holes on the outside but the two cables came through together. When we pulled our cable from the wall for inspection, it sparked. We couldn’t understand why the boiler guy couldn’t have drilled through a brick or two lower.
In this property the gas meter is in the same cupboard as the CU and electric meter. The customer told me that he had needed to call the boiler company back due to a strong smell of gas in his pantry. So, he had a gas leak and a damaged and potentially sparking cable within a couple of feet of each other. A recipe for disaster.
The boiler company is one of the biggies with dozens of engineers so the householder has lodged an official complaint which is ongoing. He’s going to need compensation for loss of FiT and we are looking at a claim for repairing the damage as well. He’s also considering a complaint to the Gas Safe Register.
(And this wasn't DIY Dave, it was a "professional" Gas Safe listed engineer).
It was Christmas Eve morning and I was all packed ready to go to visit the family down south. My mobile rang and I saw that it was a customer so I decided to answer.
We had fitted 16 panels (split 10/6) a couple of months previously (in conjunction with a complete re-roof). There was a P1 in the loft as the only viable alternative was putting the inverter outside.
The customer told me his system wasn’t working. The inverter had an error message: “Missing Grid” on the screen.
Fortunately, he lived reasonably close so I decided to visit. The panel voltages were fine and rebooting the inverter showed the same error message. The AC voltage downstairs read 244v but we only had 190v upstairs. There was no visible fault and the terminations were all correct.
It turned out that after we had fitted our system he had had a new gas boiler installed. For some reason, the boiler fitter had drilled a hole about an inch away from our SWA and managed to mangle our cable. There were two holes on the outside but the two cables came through together. When we pulled our cable from the wall for inspection, it sparked. We couldn’t understand why the boiler guy couldn’t have drilled through a brick or two lower.
In this property the gas meter is in the same cupboard as the CU and electric meter. The customer told me that he had needed to call the boiler company back due to a strong smell of gas in his pantry. So, he had a gas leak and a damaged and potentially sparking cable within a couple of feet of each other. A recipe for disaster.
The boiler company is one of the biggies with dozens of engineers so the householder has lodged an official complaint which is ongoing. He’s going to need compensation for loss of FiT and we are looking at a claim for repairing the damage as well. He’s also considering a complaint to the Gas Safe Register.
(And this wasn't DIY Dave, it was a "professional" Gas Safe listed engineer).
