PV fire safety: New knowledge!

Published (News)

FRIC has studied how the fire risks related to photovoltaic energy systems on buildings are dealt with in the Norwegian regulations for buildings and electrotechnical installations, and in the fire design of the buildings. Both building integrated systems BIPV and building applied BAPV photovoltaic systems are studied.

The knowledge is collected through interviews with stakeholders in the building industry, and review of fire design concepts for 5 different buildings. The results show gaps between the building regulations and the regulations for electrotechnical installations. The fire safety engineers are not always informed that PV systems will be installed when they develop the fire safety concept for the building. In these cases risk reducing measures for the installation itself might have been evaluated and described by others, without consideration of other fire safety measures in the building and the construction behind/below. The fire safety evaluation for the building should be holistic, not fragmented, to achieve efficient and practical solutions.

The work is a part of FRIC project 4.4 Building Integrated Energy Systems and SMART technology.

The results from this project are published in the scientific journal Fire Technology and were also presented at the SFPE Europe 2023 conference in Berlin.

Link to article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10694-023-01420-9



Photo: SINTEF AS

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