Poster Spotlight: Optimizing PV Safety Grounding--Inverters, Trackers, Fences and Trenches

Solar power plants can be expensive to provide enough ground conductor to safely mitigate ground faults. In addition, the complexity of the design leads to non-optimized grounding systems—too much ground conductor is unnecessary cost but too little exposes site personnel to hazardous voltages during ground faults. Establishing a standard approach for design, construction, and commissioning is critical to tackling this issue. The session will review techniques to optimize grounding for the key locations in the PV facility: Inverters, trackers, fences and trenches.