Hey All,
new member here. I work as an industrial Sparky in the supply industry and am a qualified EFM but because it's not my day job I know very little about domestic installation and especially PV regulations. I had Solar installed on my house last year and I've recently read a few ESO mailouts about homeowners copping a boot off their panels when they've gone to clean them because there was a fault and the installer didn't install an equipotential bond. If my installer had installed the bond how would I identify this? In a substation we bond straight to earth strap or directly to an earth grid which is the size of the substation and then some outside the fence so all earth points are super obvious. In a domestic PV install, is there typically an earth run back from the racking with the DC cables to the inverter and then looped to the main earth bar? How should it be done and what do I look for to ensure it's been done properly?
2nd question...I'm trying to understand the electrical path in the circuit. There's an inverter main switch CB installed on my board that allows AC to flow to the inverter for it to detect a network frequency...so...does the AC flow back from the inverter through this same main switch CB onto my line side bus? I've read that if an RCBO is used it needs to be a Type B...any restriction if it's just a main switch? What about with the increased requirements for RCDs under AS3000:2018...should the solar be an RCBO or is a main switch CB still acceptable?
Thanks all.
new member here. I work as an industrial Sparky in the supply industry and am a qualified EFM but because it's not my day job I know very little about domestic installation and especially PV regulations. I had Solar installed on my house last year and I've recently read a few ESO mailouts about homeowners copping a boot off their panels when they've gone to clean them because there was a fault and the installer didn't install an equipotential bond. If my installer had installed the bond how would I identify this? In a substation we bond straight to earth strap or directly to an earth grid which is the size of the substation and then some outside the fence so all earth points are super obvious. In a domestic PV install, is there typically an earth run back from the racking with the DC cables to the inverter and then looped to the main earth bar? How should it be done and what do I look for to ensure it's been done properly?
2nd question...I'm trying to understand the electrical path in the circuit. There's an inverter main switch CB installed on my board that allows AC to flow to the inverter for it to detect a network frequency...so...does the AC flow back from the inverter through this same main switch CB onto my line side bus? I've read that if an RCBO is used it needs to be a Type B...any restriction if it's just a main switch? What about with the increased requirements for RCDs under AS3000:2018...should the solar be an RCBO or is a main switch CB still acceptable?
Thanks all.
