Thanks to reader Max H. for the pictures
The Seattle Fire Department took care of a rooftop blaze atop a Capitol Hill apartment building after solar panels caught fire Friday afternoon.
SFD was called to the Holiday Apartments at 10th and John next to Capitol Hill Station just after 2 PM to the reported blaze involving solar panels atop the four-story building.
As black smoke billowed into the blue sky of the 75 F afternoon, arriving crews struggled to access the fire but were able to keep it from extending into the building. The fire was declared under control around 2:30 PM.
Residents of the Community Roots Housing affordable building were kept outside and nearby streets were closed to traffic during the large response. An inspection showed no major damage to the building.
There were no reported injuries.
The Seattle Fire Marshal was investigating to determine a cause.
Thanks to readers Max H. and River for the photos from the scene.
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Note: Clean, renewable hydropower from Seattle City Light will rarely catch your building on fire.
Speaking of rare, how many solar panel fires have you heard of?
And:
Home Fires Caused by Electrical Failure or Malfunction | NFPA Report
If rooftop solar soars, so will those numbers!
Rooftop solar in Seattle is virtue billboarding, it is the rare home that will ever pay itself back when you add up the costs… not including the disposal costs, because that would then reduce the number down almost zero.
Now what is interesting? Solar panels will lower your home’s temperature by shading your roof in the summer. I have never seen the numbers on whether heat loss from solar load on your roof during the winter balances this out.
I can’t imagine what you could be talking about. The average solar panel pays for itself in 6-10 years, and at the end of its 25-35 year life, recycling it only costs $15-$45.
I put solar panels on my house in 2013, and I was making a profit seven years later. Many other people I know have done the same, and prices have only dropped since then.
Your solar panels were heavily subsidized, and the financial benefit you’ve received has effectively come at your neighbors’ expense. Efforts to reform net metering in Washington to make costs more equitable have made only marginal progress—annual crediting remains one of the more regressive aspects of the current system.
Commercially generated solar power? The cost analysis is vastly different.
Want to help the environment?
Plant some trees.
Your downwind neighbors will appreciate you not adding yet more warm air your shared local environment.
And just to be clear: I’m not questioning your intentions. We have all been sold a message for the last decade by Musk and his associates.
We are though well past the point where residential rooftop solar libertarianism should be given a free pass under the guise of environmentalism.
Total nonsense. Show evidence of your absurd claim “Follow the Money” or please just stop spreading these absurd claims of yours..
Solar panels power houses AND EVs all over the world. I bet you think EVs are firestarters, too!
Ugh, every expert who knows nothing of which they speak and offers zero proof.
You bought an EV and installed Solar for the environment?
Did Elon Musk sell you on this?
EV’s are luxury cars that do not pay road taxes and when married to residential solar?
You park your car in your driveway at night where instead of paying for power when you use it, you are a leach: “The battery is your grid”
Bonus points if you installed enough panels that even in winter—when production is negligible—you still enjoy a tax-free lifestyle without worrying about your home power bill.
Musk did a great job of selling the lifestyle.
So if anyone has read any of my comments then you all know I find the reader responses on this blog to show, very clearly, what is wrong with Seattle.
And my favorite thing, my **absolutely favorite thing,** is to read the inevitable “failed progressive policies” responses to anything that happens.
It’s fascinating seeing these commenters, whose brains are clearly wholly or partially pickled in right wing agitation propaganda, come out with the same tired, wrong, and weird talking points over and over again.
Like Jeff’s comment here!
Conservatives are so weird to begin with. If you look at the state of American conservatism it’s very clear they all suffer from severe mental illness.
In fact, that’s a great way to understand the modern American conservative: the simple aphorism “conservatism is mental illness” will get you so, so far to grokking — see what I did there! — these people.
Now, conservatism is particularly weird in a place like Seattle, where most actual conservatives — and let’s just call this group what they are, i.e., “the mentally ill” — have to **pretend** to not be conservatives.
Thus the never ending entertainment value of responses on this blog.
“Conservatives are so weird to begin with. If you look at the state of American conservatism it’s very clear they all suffer from severe mental illness.”
Always remember…
1/2 of America is dumber than average.
1 out of 5 HS grads are functionally illiterate.
Meaning they always are and will be victims to brainwashing.
When you factor in the elderly. Who are prime grift targets? You start to see it.
It’s under educated incurious cult members.
What a nasty comment. I’m not a conservative, and I don’t agree with what Jeff or Follow the Money wrote, but this response is catty and cruel. There’s no need to be a bully.
Are you a medical doctor or psychologist who can make a mental health diagnosis? If not then I would avoid labeling conservatives as having severe mental illness. They will just turn around and use that against you and the liberals.
Glad to see that despite the malfunction and fire, it didn’t get wildly out of hand. If there is any follow up, I’d be curious what the water damage is/was from trying to put it out. I’m kind of banging on a drum in my building about some eco things and wonder how insurance would adjust around solar panels.
Fire insurance covers them. No longer wonder.
It has a sprinkler system. It’s not the Triangle Shirt Factory or 1880 Seattle.
How much heavy metals and other toxins were released into the air from this fire?
OH? So you are pro environmental climate change?
Welcome to the club!
Not at all. But I like to do math and I know that (a) there is _some_ truth to the previous comment that in Seattle, rooftop solar is a virtue signal more than a practical environmental upgrade..and (b) there is literally ZERO point in the US and Europe rolling out more solar at the current technology if the goal is impacting climate change. You have to convince China and India to stop building coal-fired power plants if you want to actually impact GLOBAL climate.
The same China that is producing most of Earth’s EVs and almost all of the affordable ones?! China is investing in tons of green energy things, too. Meanwhile, the current admin wants to cover us in oil/plastic and coal, roll back all progress toward cleaner air, land and water and set Earth alit. But you keep deflecting and twisting context “TaxpayerGay”. You must think we are morons, and suckers who would believe your poppycock, eh?
lol, and I guess we shouldn’t do anything about homelessness until every other city does something first, oh wait, you earnestly believe that one too.
A lot less than the average ICE engine pollutes in its lifespan. Gimme a break. Conservative know-it-all clowns everywhere on here. We will drown out your misleading misinformed, false-equivalent claims