The once-Great Britain has gone all-in on “green energy” as a matter of national policy, and it hasn’t worked out too well for them. But then, the UK has a lot of policies in place right now that are promising to be truly disastrous, but we’ll talk about their immigration policies another time. No, this time it is energy, and the UK’s government has been pushing all manner of boondoggles, including such things as residential rooftop solar panel/battery installations.
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There’s just one problem: They’re catching fire.
A surge in house fires caused by solar panels and their batteries is sparking safety concerns over Ed Miliband’s plan for millions more rooftop installations.
UK fire services faced a blaze involving a solar panel once every two days in 2024, according to data gathered by insurance company QBE, marking a 60pc increase in the past two years.
That’s a lot of fires, presenting a deadly danger – and a 60 percent increase in two years is nothing short of alarming. There may be more to it than just the solar panels, but they are certainly a contributing factor:
QBE canvassed data from across the UK’s fire services to see how many blazes were caused by solar installations.
It also found fires were rising faster than the rate of installations, suggesting a rise in the number of solar panels could not explain the increase in incidents alone.
Adrian Simmonds, a senior QBE risk manager, said: “Solar is essential to the UK’s clean energy transition but the rapid pace of deployment is raising risk concerns.
“Our analysis shows fires involving solar panels have risen at twice the rate of new installations over the past two years. Safe solar panel installation and maintenance are essential to reducing fires.”
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We should note, as the Telegraph points out, that it’s not just installation that’s key there, it’s also, maybe more so, maintenance.
The most common source of faults were inverters – electronic devices that convert the direct current produced by solar panels into the alternating current used by the electricity grid.
This process generates a lot of heat, so inverters have to be positioned with good ventilation and kept free of obstructions. Poorly trained installers can place them in lofts or cupboards where they get hot and from where a fire can spread fast.
Sticking something known to generate heat on a rooftop, where obstructions would seem likely to accumulate, seems a bad idea.
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Lithium-ion batteries are a known fire risk, as well as these inverters. And consider that rooftops can attract all manner of trash, blown in by the wind, brought in by nesting birds, any one of dozens of different sources. This makes the idea of a residential rooftop installation seem fraught.
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And, of course, we always come back to the same calculus: The solar panels, even working perfectly, even perfectly maintained, are still producing intermittent, low-density energy. Britain keeps pushing these ideas, but they are doomed to fail, just as such projects here in the United States are failing. There’s no need for it. Britain has ample supplies of offshore oil and natural gas. But as long as the Labour people are in charge in Britain, expect to see these boondoggles continue.
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