Shock From Solar Panel Cable

If a lightning bolt had hit while your mother was holding a cable, she would have exploded!!

Depends if the only ground was/is through the mains. If so, then the whole solar panel system would pick up a healthy charge from the storm.

Your mom would give it the best discharge path to earth when she picked up the wire end.

Hopefully, not this extreme.

Looks like the anti-islanding protection of your inverter is purely academic, or the electrons just can't reed Chineese stop signs. S.M.

There can be a charge on the ground without a lightning strike. Lightning only occurs when there is enough charge to exceed the breakdown voltage of the air path. Any large metallic structure, such as a tower, can hold enough charge to cause injury.

If lightning had hit the panel, wouldn't she have heard it and seen the flash? No guesswork there!

She inserted the solar panel's output into the wall socket?

Despite her shoes? Was she wearing some kind of leather lineman's footwear? Not that footwear choice makes much of a difference with regard to lightning...

If the current in the "home network" happened outside...of...it...then how did she get shocked? What is your reasoning there?

Odd language for an engineering forum...

When you have a moment to spare, please take a look at CR4's Member Pages and make note of how many CR4 members are very likely *not* from English-speaking countries. Quite a few, I'd wager. Maybe the majority? This IS an international forum after all and so are we surprised?

Possibly in the interest of clarity, the OP may wish to re-post his question in his native tongue. Perhaps this might serve to better level the playing field?

Well, natarjsn doesn't list a country, so I couldn't really be sure.

I don't typecast someone based on how they write or based on their nationality.

I feel that someone who posts on an engineering forum shouldn't be treated any differently, from a safety perspective, just because they happen to be from a non-English speaking country.

If he (or she) has set up a solar-powered scenario such that their mother is getting shocked, then I would think that most on the forum here would be lambasting them...much as they do to the English as a primary language types.

And yes, I would recommend to the OP a forum which used their native tongue. Maybe their question would be easier to understand.

She was not plugging the solar panel output to the wall socket, she was plugging the INVERTER output in, likely a rudimentary safey disconnect.

Natarajsn, the inverter would be storing a charge in the capacitors that might be at a significant voltage potential. If the cable/connectr was moist, along with your mother's skin and the shoes, conduction across all those moist surfaces is easily possible. That's why they make insulated switches.

I still don't see it...

...plugging the inverter output in...?

I guess I would have to see, but most times a plug is referred to as the dongle at the end of a cord which has male parts. If that's the output of the inverter, then there are exposed energized parts. A receptacle isn't "plugged in", it's plugged-into.

It sounded to me as if the "rudimentary" system just plugs into the wall as a veeeery basic way of feeding the output of the solar plant into the home's electrical system. We all know how those types of situations normally end up, which is why I am thinking his momma got zapped.

If the inverter output has female parts at the end of the dongle, then I get it. Not that it's important that I understand any of it.

If I were he, I would invest in an ATS or design another type of cutoff/switchover (insulated switch).