Walmart Sues Tesla Over Fires At Stores Fitted With Its Solar Panels (reuters.com) 79
Walmart filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Tesla accusing the company of supplying solar panels that were responsible for fires at about seven of its stores. Reuters reports: The fires destroyed significant amounts of store merchandise and required substantial repairs, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket losses, Walmart said in the lawsuit. As of November 2018, no fewer than seven Walmart stores, including in Denton, Maryland and Beavercreek, Ohio, had experienced fires due to Tesla's solar systems, according to the lawsuit. The world's largest retailer started using solar panels made by SolarCity in 2010 and the roofs of around 240 of its stores were fitted with solar panels made by the company. "This is a breach of contract action arising from years of gross negligence and failure to live up to industry standards by Tesla with respect to solar panels that Tesla designed, installed, and promised to operate and maintain safely on the roofs of hundreds of Walmart stores," Walmart said in the court filing.
Burning Down Wallmart Stores? (Score:5, Funny)
Elon Musk really is the hero the world needed.
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Let me fix that for you.
I'm sure Walmart was holding them wrong.
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Wallmart should be worried (Score:2)
Or a Bond villain? He could rename himself Hugo Drax and fit in nicely with his outer space colonization theme.
Well, Musk can build rockets that park his car on Mars . . . and he does sell flame throwers . . . so I think he would be also capable of making a nuke.
A message to Wallmart greeters . . . "Please practice your 'Duck and Cover' routine."
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"Please practice your 'STOP, DROP and ROLL"
Re:Wallmart should be worried (Score:5, Funny)
No need to go through all that trouble. Musk put the issue to rest by tweeting that Walmart is a pedo.
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Out of (huge) pocket expenses? (Score:1)
Out of pocket expenses? The stores aren't insured?
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For a small enough thing, insurance becomes unnecessary. Everything is relative.
Wal-Mart insuring the store and the merchandise inside is like me insuring a pair of my own shoes.
It would suck if the solar panels on my shoes caused my shoes to catch on fire, but I'd rather just buy new shoes and complain really loudly about the guy whose gear set them on fire than to hire a profitable underwriter to insure them.
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The total damage from the fires from the 2010 SolarCity systems is reported as "hundreds of thousands of dollars" [theverge.com], which for Walmart, absolutely is a drop in the bucket.
But don't worry, I'm sure shorts will have no problem having a hayday with this news.
Of course they're insured (Score:2)
But, to get the insurance companies to pay up, they have to show that the fires weren't caused by anything that Walmart or its employees did.
Re:Out of (huge) pocket expenses? (Score:5, Informative)
Probably not for that level of damage. I work for a company of similar size, our fire insurance deductible is $50 million. Things are just different when you're operating on that scale.
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Self-insured? (Score:5, Informative)
Out of pocket expenses? The stores aren't insured?
An insurance company is about creating a large pool of insured and averaging out their risks and costs. Instead of paying out for YOUR big-but-rare loss if it happens, you (and everybody else in the pool) pays your share of the average loss costs of the pool, all the time. Plus a rakeoff to the insurance company, of course, to pay for their services, let them accumulate a fund for a disaster year, or buy re-insurance against a big loss.
When you're as big as Walmart (or Ford Motor Company, etc.) you're big enough to be a risk pool all by yourself. So it makes sense to be your own insurance company, at least for some categories and levels of coverage. Then you get to keep the insurance company's rakeoff. 4: Profit!
Walmart "uses a combination of insurance, self-insured retentions, and self-insurance." [walmart.com]
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Also wouldn't matter if they were insured (Score:5, Informative)
First, as other people pointed out, Walmart is bigger than an insurance company. They are better situated to insure themselves than an insurance company would be. It can be cheaper to be their own insurance than to buy external insurance.
Secondly, the lawsuit would proceed the same regardless. If I recklessly burned down your house, I would fully expect to get sued. Your home insurance protects YOU, not me. When Walmart buys insurance for itself, that protects *Walmart*, it doesn't release *Tesla* from liability. Specifically, the insurance purchased by the property owner would provide Walmart with two things:
1. Make up for the difference between their losses and what is recovered from Tesla
2. Get the money to Walmart *before* the suit is against Tesla is completed
Which means if Walmart wins, some of the money would be returned to their insurance carrier, if any. If the insurance company fully paid the claim, and the suit will only result in getting money back to the insurance company, the insurance company generally pays the cost of attorneys and other costs of suit.
Large companies don't need insurance (usually) (Score:3)
Out of pocket expenses? The stores aren't insured?
No they are not insured by third parties. Large companies are typically "self insured" which basically means they have the money to deal with this sort of thing out of pocket. Walmart could have an entire store (or several) burn down and it would barely cause a ripple in their profits. The only reason to buy insurance is if the risks you face are larger than your ability to absorb them. I buy health insurance because I can't pay for a heart transplant out of pocket. Walmart doesn't have that sort of pr
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Walmart makes about $500,000,000,000/year. There are 31,536,000 seconds in a year. That means Walmart's revenue is $15,855/second. it's difficult to imagine how little a few hundred thousand dollars is in this scenario.
They have thousands of stores and their profits are in the billions. Companies of that size "self-insure", meaning they take what they would pay for insurance and set it aside in a private fund.
Think about it - at some point, there's no reason to pool risk with other companies, which is w
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Rule of thumb on insurance:
The insurer never loses.
You buy insurance for an unlikely event for a sum that you can afford, because you'll never be able to afford the situation if the actual event ever did occur. I've had car accidents that I did not report to the insurance company, even though I carried collision coverage. The repairs were less than $1k. If I had chosen to report it, the North Carolina insurance premium would have doubled from $500 to $1k, every six months for three years. It wouldn't ma
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2010? Yes, Tesla owns them now... (Score:5, Informative)
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The world's largest retailer started using solar panels made by SolarCity in 2010
Not only that, but Solar City sure as hell wasn't even manufacturing any panels in 2010. Apparently they first acquired any manufacturing expertise only in 2014 [reuters.com]. And I'm sure it took some time to even start making production modules.
Re:2010? Yes, Tesla owns them now... (Score:4, Informative)
But Solar City would have liability for the installation. Wal-Mart could go after them for that. And Tesla would have received that liability with the purchase of the company.
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I mean its possible the fire was caused by faulty panels, in which case I think solar city ends up pretty much ok because they pass along the liability... but what if the fire was caused by an installation failure and not a manufacturing failure. In that case it would certainly be an issue for solar city. When your workers screw up and cause a fire, you end up with liability.
Honestly I dont know what happened but I'm sure there will be a lot of arguing about it in court.
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You can read the complaint yourself and see what the issues are, but in general it's poor maintenance, faulty wiring, allowing hotspots to form, no "as-built" drawings of the final installation, etc. Most of it looks to be installation related issues, so definitely a solar city liability. Walmart also hired Davis Polk, a very expensive white shoe law firm. They are taking this very seriously, and will be spending millions to litigate this.
https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/40v40ia2y/supreme-court-of-the-s
No time like the future (Score:1)
The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire! (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vv_LwwwpmU/ [youtube.com]
Specifically, how does that happen? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Specifically, how does that happen? (Score:5, Interesting)
Then there is the inverter or even the quick disconnect boxes which could have been insufficiently sized or just plain faulty.
How much of that equipment was made by Solar City/Tesla is unknown but I think they do make their own solar panels. I've never heard of a solar panel catching fire though.
LoB
Re: Specifically, how does that happen? (Score:5, Interesting)
I got panels from Solar City shortly before Tesla bought them. I asked if I would need to upgrade my electrical panel and told me it was not necessary. When I later checked my electrical panel I realized that they double tapped wires because my panel had run out of room. Double tapping is not authorized by the electrical code because it is potentially (no pun intended) dangerous.
I was not too happy when I realized the shoddy work. I fixed the issue by moving some of my fuses to a new subpanel and adding a ground bar to the existing panel.
Re: Specifically, how does that happen? (Score:5, Interesting)
Double-lugging can be ok, if done properly. You do need to add a primary fuse/disconnect though and a PV disconnect. In the “early” days of PV a number of things were done that were technical code compliant at the time, but have since been forbidden.
For a 2010 installation, I am not surprised that they had issues at 5% of their (large) sites. There were a few “cowboy” things that were done in the industry that should not have been permissible.
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did your local building inspector sign off on it? I mean thats the whole point of having the permits and the inspection. If its not allowed in your jurisdiction then they should have stopped the work immediately and insisted on a new box. It is possible that your local building inspector is an idiot, but usually they are sticklers.
But I know that it is allowed in some areas so YMMV.
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How does this happen? Well, one possibility is that current solar panels only convert on the order of 15-20% of the incoming solar radiation to electricity. The rest is either reflected of becomes heat. Take a big sheet of black material, put it out in the sun and make sure that it gets maximal sunlight, it's likely going to get pretty warm around the time of the Summer Solstice. Ordinarily, you'd expect the panels to be designed such that convection will keep them and their mounts from combusting. But
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They might have cheaped out on the cabling too. As someone who has worked sales for solar setups in the past people often think they'll just use the kind of cable you would wire a car with and think you're just trying to take them for a ride when you're talking about more expensive solar cabling.
Of course solar cabling has UV stabilized insulation so it can happily live outside for years without getting brittle and breaking up. The cable you would use in a car doesn't expect to see much sunlight and as such
Think of it as an always live circuit (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know about the SolarCity/Tesla panels, but I've been told by installers that assembling solar panels is actually quite hazardous because they are producing power any time there is light. With poor installation practices, wire insulation can be damaged (leading to hot spots and fire), panels can be damaged resulting in shorts across them and along with all this installers have been known to be electrocuted when they hooked up the panels.
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If the customer is disinterested in the quality of service, or otherwise does not have the capacity to judge the quality, they'll often receive a poorer product. I expect that Walmart has a team that aides the construction and acquisition phase for new properties, but doubt that such a team would be tasked with retrofitting of solar panels into existing sites, at least the physical le
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I just finished a gig doing solar panel manufacturing. Those panels will shock you even as unassembled strings freshly laid on the glass. A typical string runs from 6-7V (10-12 cell, sometimes 14 making 8V) 6V WILL fucking nail you when it's coming at you at 10A. We got zapped plenty of times through our shitty rubberized-tip gloves while soldering the strings into full panels many a time. We always waited for the new soldering techs to get their first wake-up jolt, it was one of the (pun intended) brighter
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A typical string runs from 6-7V (10-12 cell, sometimes 14 making 8V) 6V WILL fucking nail you when it's coming at you at 10A.
What? You're not going to easily get 10A from a 6V source through a human. Whole body internal resistance is on the order of 300 ohms, which is only achieved when immersing whole limbs in separate pools of salt water, and you would struggle to reach that in a real world situation on a single limb with an open wound or some sort of high voltage peak with enough energy delivered to burn through the skin. Sweaty/wet skin is a lot more conductive than dry skin, but still not near what the immersion experimen
Re:Think of it as an always live circuit (Score:5, Informative)
6V WILL fucking nail you when it's coming at you at 10A
No, it's impossible to get 10A from a 6V source passing though a human body part. The resistance of your skin is too high.
Anything up to 48V is considered safe, although you may experience some discomfort at the higher end, especially with wet and/or broken skin.
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Please tell that to every tech that works there and has been shocked by those panels. They aren't building up static on the line from conveyor movement as all the equipment is grounded and the building is properly bonded.
And this happens through rubber-tipped gloves.
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Want to know the company? SunSpark Technologies.
Come back when you and the hundreds of other idiots at the NEC understand that overall wattage doesn't give a fuck. The analog is pelting a brick wall with pebbles. Eventually, the wall breaks down and a lot of pebbles get through.
Solar demonstrates this nicely right in the manufacturing facility.
Try again when you've had to go to the hospital for a single 10-cell string shocking the fuck out of you at 10A.
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Ever tried licking a 9V battery when you were a kid? Hurts a lot.
Granted, that's pretty much the definition of wet skin, but it doesn't take even close to 48V to cause some serious pain.
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Have you tried covering them up with a tarp before you finish the wiring?
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Bullshit. Plain and simple.
I have a car battery that is nominally 12, that's TWELVE volts, and I have no problem shorting it with my hands. The only way that 6V is going to shock you is if you stick your tongue on them.
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Tesla panels are ridiculously-expensive, BEFORE installation.
Cover the solar panels with darkenating cloth, like the curtains that block out 99.999% of light and 80% of heat. They always produce 600VDC.
I've seriously considered installing panels over a covered pavilion above my car port, separate from the house, and running the charge port for the car there. Then I'd run power into the house, instead of out.
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What are you asking about again? A solar panel or a solar installation? The former is not a fire hazard, the latter is as susceptible to faulty wiring, poor installation, faulty electronics, etc as any other electrical work, something which sets 51000 houses a year on fire in the USA.
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Where there is electricity flowing through wire, there will be heat from resistance. More current, more heat - this is why extension cords and such have amperage limits on the tags.
I would bet that Walmart was probably some of SolarCity's larger installs - I'm wondering if they didn't use large enough gauge wire, or didn't divide up panels into parallel circuits properly. I would guess that there would be inspection by some permitting authority before given permission to operate, but you never know?
I gues
All electronics are a potential fire hazard (Score:2)
I never knew solar panels are a fire hazard. I suppose it's the electronics but I'm wondering how specifically a solar installation can start a fire?
Anything and I do mean anything involving wires carrying current is a potential fire hazard, particularly anything involved in delivering power. Solar panels are no different. The number of possible failure modes are almost endless. Bad manufacturing, bad design, short circuits, arcing, improper installation, moisture, corrosion, failed insulation, extreme weather, and the list goes on and on. Most failures are unlikely but unlikely does not equal impossible.
Conspiracy (Score:2)
This is obviously a conspiracy by big asphalt to drive down the stock price and keep roofs from having solar shingles
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Re:Its a deep pocket. (Score:4, Insightful)
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You don't stay in business by letting people rip you off.
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Feels like a corporate attorney is trying to avoid the axe in a recession by filing anything he can find.
Horseshit. If I own 5 Ferraris and you key one of them, expect me to come after you to replace damages regardless of the fact I can pay for them with loose pocket change.
I wondered about that Spam I got... (Score:2)
Tesla Solar is a HOT Item right now at Walmart!!
Maybe that actually was a newsfeed. :)
What's this button? (Score:2)
Probably... (Score:2)
Bummer (Score:1)
RE: Solar systems for rent from Tesla.... (Score:3)
I had saw a news article the other day where Tesla was going to rent out solar systems to homeowners and such. If those systems are having the same issues, I think I will pass on these until I can get more info.
This is ... disturbing. (Score:1)
Causes? investigations? (Score:2)
I'd really like to see an investigative breakdown of the problems and fire causes in this kit, to see what the commonalities are - particularly if the seven fires all happen to be in the same geographic area.
A "solar panel installation" of this type comprises multiple technologies from multiple manufacturers, finally wired together by local contractors and the loose wording of the lawsuit provides no hint as to what parts are burning up and for what causes.
It's a bit like suing Tesla for a housefire because