Not To Worry, Summer Lightning Is No Match For Solar PV Systems

The first thing that comes to mind when one considers installing a solar photovoltaic system is the maitenance of the project. Will I have to monitor it? Clean it? Have it repaired? And most importantly, is it weather proof?While the keep-up of the systems is hot on everyones minds, we can assure you that PV systems can handle almost any storm (figuratively and literally). In order to assure this promise, we take special precautions when dealing with the most common summer threat to the systems; lightning. A lightning arrester is a device used on electrical power systems, or in our case, PV systems, to protect the insulation on the system from the damaging effect of the lightning. Metal oxide varistors (MOVs) have been used for power system protection since the mid 1970's. The typical lightning arrester also known as a surge arrester has a high voltage terminal and a ground terminal. When a lightning surge or switching surge travels down the power system to the arrester, the current from the surge is diverted around the protected insulation in most cases to earth. As we have seen by our recent project in Haiti which was recently struck by lightning and was left unharmed, these arresters do their job effortlessly and can be trusted to keep our PV systems safe.