Tesla Solar Panel Fires

From the Berkshire Eagle in Massachusetts: Sandisfield solar fire was not the first for Tesla systems. It also wasn't the only solar fire to strike in the last week

Three house fires in MA, and a fire at a Big Box store in New Jersey. All of those coming in less than one week.

How often does this kind of thing happen? No one is tracking it.

And it appears rooftop solar fires in general might happen more often than we know — no one is officially keeping track.

I am all in favor of solar panels if you live somewhere that they make sense. (I have used solar panels in the past - not in Ohio - for a portion of my daily electrical needs. I am NOT in favor of putting solar panels on your roof, and not just because I don't like the way they look.

I am also completely opposed to the use of lithium-ion batters for residential battery power. We use lithium-ion batteries in cars and phones because we need the batteries to be light weight. Unless you are planning on driving your house, the batteries don't need to be light. They need to resist catching on fire, and they need to affordable, or the need to last a damn long time. That comes down to either good-old-fashioned, lead-acid batteries (invest in an automatic watering system) that are properly vented to the outdoors, or Edison Iron batteries, which last a very long time, but are expensive up front. That doesn't even cover the slave labor in Africa used to produce cobalt, or environmental devastation that comes with lithium mining South America.

Maybe someone should start checking into this fire issue? Of course that would fly in the face of the narrative. And it would also cut into Tesla's profits if people stop using their lithium-ion batteries.

No one is officially tracking solar fires

• From 2002 and 2022, the Office of the State Fire Marshal received 16 reports of solar fires reported by local fire departments
• In most of those, information about the manufacturer was not available or not provided, but neither Tesla nor SolarCity were among them
• Boston25 News found there have been at least 15 residential fires in Massachusetts linked to rooftop solar installations between 2017 and 2019