this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2025
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Electric Vehicles
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Opaque? That's a fire.
Scratch? That's a fire.
Ding? That's a fire.
And somehow it is still less likely to engulf in flames than a Cybertruck
it's a solar cell not a lion battery.
Yes but did you know that there's electricity flowing through a solar panel? If you damage or shade one cell, and the panel is under load, the full load has to pass thru the damaged cell. This can cause a fire. A lithium cell causes a fire when punctuated or damaged because you're basically bridging the terminals internally and most chemistries go into thermal runaway after a certain temperature has been reached.
OMG REALLY? PHOTOVOLTAICS THAT CONVERT SUNLIGHT INTO POWER HAVE ELECTRICITY INVOLVED? NO SHIIIIIIIIT!??!
pfft
yes, something like .03% of solar installs will incur damage at some point over their installed life; if there's brush and easily ignited material around the dc drop there can be fire issues. Every single report I've seen on this calls the risk 'extremely low'.
now, do you think mercedes built a car that can catch fire every time the door's dinged at the supermarket?
Do you really think that?
REALLY?
Because if you think this is a standard rooftop panel and there aren't any considerations to being on an automobile I think you need to take some time and introspection.
a tiny bit of digging:
Here’s the reassuring part: solar panel fires are extremely rare.
In the UK, a study found only 80 solar-related fire incidents across 1 million installations (BRE National Solar Centre).
In Australia, regulators reported fewer than 1 fire per 10,000 systems annually, mostly caused by faulty DC isolators—not the panels.
When installed properly, solar systems are far less likely to start a fire than many everyday electrical devices.
so no, I don't classify this as the same thing as a battery, and if you had half a brain, you wouldn't either.