Solar PV & Battery Storage Thermography — South Africa's Emerging Fire-Risk Category

A New Entrant in South Africa's Fire-Risk Profile

South Africa's electrical fire risk profile has a fast-growing new component. Fire Force — a fire-response partnership between Discovery Insure and private firefighting service Fire Ops SA — reported in September 2026 that solar-related incidents now account for approximately one in four of the structural fires its teams attend. Fire Ops SA's CEO and Deputy Fire Chief described a sharp increase in solar-related callouts over the past two years.

The exposure base explains the trend. Statistics South Africa's 2025 General Household Survey puts the number of SA homes with a solar installation at roughly 675,000 — an 86% increase in three years, driven overwhelmingly by installations made during the peak load-shedding years. Those systems are now three to five years into service, ageing past their initial commissioning without, in most cases, a corresponding maintenance or inspection regime.

Failure Modes Specific to PV and Battery Storage Systems

Discovery Insure's technical marketing lead has been explicit on this point: a solar system is not something installed and forgotten. The failure modes driving the reported increase in incidents are consistent with what thermographic assessment is designed to find, and several that it is not:

• Ageing or faulty batteries — capacity fade, cell imbalance, and physical degradation (swelling) increase internal resistance and heat generation, particularly in lithium-ion chemistries approaching end of life.
• Inverter faults — internal component degradation and cooling-path failures raise operating temperature at the heatsink and output terminals.
• Loose or deteriorating wiring and connections — DC string connectors (MC4 and equivalent), combiner box terminations, and AC isolator connections loosen or corrode over time, producing classic resistive heating signatures.
• Poor original installation — under-torqued terminations, incorrect cable sizing, and inadequate strain relief accelerate all of the above.

What Thermography Detects — and Its Limits Here

For the electrical balance-of-system components, thermography applies the same fault-detection logic used across any distribution or MCC survey: comparative ΔT against ambient, against load-equivalent reference points, and against manufacturer-expected operating ranges. Practical inspection points include:

• DC combiner box terminals and string connectors
• Inverter heatsinks, DC input terminals, and AC output terminals
• Battery terminal lugs, busbars, and inter-cell connections (external, accessible surfaces)
• AC isolator and distribution board breaker feeding the inverter circuit

The Compliance Gap: A Certificate of Compliance Is a Point-in-Time Document

SANS 10142-1 governs the electrical installation at the point of commissioning, and a valid Certificate of Compliance (CoC) — not to be confused with a certificate of completion — confirms that the installation met the applicable standard when issued. It says nothing about the condition of that installation three, five, or ten years later. This distinction was illustrated publicly in the Discovery Insure reporting: a homeowner with a valid CoC on file suffered a distribution-board fire traced to an inverter fault, and a post-fire inspection uncovered faults that had developed after commissioning. The CoC did not fail — it was never designed to certify ongoing condition, only the installation as built.

This is the same gap thermographic surveys are already positioned to close for conventional electrical infrastructure. Extending survey scope explicitly to PV and battery storage equipment is a logical, low-marginal-cost extension of an existing service relationship, not a new discipline.

A Baseline, Not Yet a Trend

Most PV and battery installations in South Africa have no prior thermographic survey history. A first assessment of any such system should be treated and reported as a baseline — establishing photographic and thermal reference points at known load and environmental conditions — rather than as trend data. Trending value accrues from repeat annual assessment, consistent with the approach Enisave Solutions already applies to electrical and mechanical survey programmes.

Practical Recommendations

• Bring PV and battery storage equipment explicitly into the scope of your existing annual electrical thermographic survey rather than treating it as a separate, unscheduled system
• Confirm the original installation carries a valid electrical Certificate of Compliance issued by a registered person, and treat that CoC as a commissioning record — not an ongoing safety assurance
• Record system load and inverter output at the time of inspection; ΔT on PV and battery equipment is as load-dependent as any other electrical asset
• Pair thermographic findings with a visual check for battery swelling, discolouration, unusual odour, or BMS fault codes — indicators outside thermography's detection range
• Verify adequate ventilation and separation from combustible materials at the inverter and battery installation location