Hello everyone,
I am working on PV projects in the Netherlands and as in Europe it is not mandatory to install specific protection devices for arc faults there is not much info about this, I was wondering if anyone knew further information about possible solutions for PV installations and which devices are available now in the market as it's for a future project.
I have seen that the american standards estabilishes 3 types of devices for arc protection:
- AFCIS (Interrupter+detector)
- AFDD (only detectors)
-ID(Interrupter)
So my quesiton also is regarding the inverters that have DC switches but don't have any protection devices against arcs and as the detection technology is different from e.g. fuses installing these devices is the only solution, I was wondering if anyone knows more about installing a detector (AFDD) and install it combinating it with the DC switches within the inverter.
Hi Celia,
The standard practice is to use the fuse on each of string but it entirely depends on number of strings connected in parallel.
Arc faults are generally occura due to short cirxuit in cables which can create arc flash.
Please go through the link below:
https://www.acsolarwarehouse.com/news/solar-fires-dc-arc-faults-on-solar-systems/
Happy to help if need further info.
Thanks for you response Amit, but I have been doing a little rearch as well and for AFD (Arc Fault Detectors) there is no technology on the DC side which you could say is 100% reliable yet, the only solution for these in the end is to install these AFDs within the inverters as there are no companies which supplies these devices as independet devices as such, they only supply now for inverter manufacturers.
But about the fuses, fuses work with temperature limits so whenever there is an overcurrent, they get heated and so the blow off. In an installation you can find series, parallel and ground arc faults, and for series is now getting more seeing in the market protections within the inverters for this issue via AFD, but for parallel arcs maybe a solution could be what you said, using directional fuses in order to detect whenever there is a parallel arc, the reverse current that is created because of this?
There is no that much information in the actual PV market about this and this is why I'm surprise.
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