Walmart Sues Tesla After Seven Solar Rooftop Fires

Walmart is suing Tesla after solar panels at seven stores allegedly caught fire, according to a court filing.

Walmart also claims Tesla “routinely deployed individuals to inspect the solar systems who lacked basic solar training and knowledge.”

“Tesla’s personnel did not know, for example, how to conduct inspections or how to use simple tools, such as temperature-measuring ‘guns’ used to detect hotspots, and a Tesla employee failed to identify multiple hotspots that Walmart’s consultants observed,” the suit said.

Walmart wants Tesla to remove solar panels at all 240 stores where they are installed and to pay damages caused by the fires. The suit alleges breach of contract, gross negligence and failure to live up to industry standards.

“On information and belief, when Tesla purchased SolarCity to bail out the flailing company (whose executives included two of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s first cousins), Tesla failed to correct SolarCity’s chaotic installation practices or to adopt adequate maintenance protocols, which would have been particularly important in light of the improper installation practices,” the suit said.

The news comes shortly after Tesla announced an attempt to boost its solar energy business by offering solar rentals for residential customers for as little as $50 a month.

See the full filing here.

Image: Flickr

 

[Ocelot]

Installation of solar has been dropping for Tesla. I wonder if they knew internally they had a problem that needed to get fixed, before hitting the accelerator again. mmh.

 

[Silicon Desert]

The inverter operates in parallel to the grid. So an inverter causing damage to something parallel to the grid would be like a flea pushing a dog over. In an inverter vs grid battle the inverter dies....

It is easy to spot...

Being an electronic engineer and having consulted on the design of inverters for SMA in the past, I generally agree with that statement, EXCEPT an inverter can do some pretty nasty stuff in home systems for certain types of failures. Somewhat related, I've seen simple power surges from other equipment in a home to cause damage to other devices, so I don't doubt an inverter flea can push over a dog. Been there, seen it, fixed it.

 

[erikreynolds]

These seem to panels installed a number of years ago... but even so, it does give me pause before proceeding with a solar rental install I'm considering. I would imagine the panels they used back then are not necessarily the same panels Tesla is installing in 2019, but who knows. I would hazard a guess that the may be using different products for extremely large installations to take advantage of volume pricing, etc. The hap-hazard installations causing wiring failures and fires is very concerning!

 

[vickh]

i wonder why it had to come to lawsuits... usually companies will try to work this stuff out privately..

this is Tesla though they have an anti establishment problem ( see SEC, NHTSA etc...)

 

[camalaio]

I do not think this has been linked yet. This document goes into detail for some of the fires:

https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/download.html?id=283655437&z=20d36aed

I've only read the first one. A bolt was installed in place of a fuse. Ouch.

 

[rsg123]

The guys that did my installation were watching YouTube videos in an effort to figure out what they did wrong

 

[r1200gs4ok]

Ummmm.... probably because Tesla have been intractable and refused to acknowledge their culpability in all of this or come up with an acceptable mitigation plan.

In my area we have several small but well established solar installation companies and then we have solar city who appears to be entirely staffed with pimply faced kids who don't look like they know DC from AC.

the do....only if listening to music

 

[afadeev]

this is Tesla though they have an anti establishment problem ( see SEC, NHTSA etc...)

More like an anti-customer problem: when anything goes sideways post delivery (cars) or post-install (solar), good luck finding someone at Tesla to take ownership of the problem and make things right.

Small customers (us, car owners) grumble and move on. Large customers (Walmart), sue Tesla to extract the desired resolution.
Same root cause, different remedies.

Spawning conspiracy theories around this, is unnecessary and lame.

a

 

[MorrisonHiker]

I do not think this has been linked yet. This document goes into detail for some of the fires:

https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/download.html?id=283655437&z=20d36aed

I've only read the first one. A bolt was installed in place of a fuse. Ouch.

Do solar installation employees open the inverter to install fuses or is that something Fronius would've done? When they installed my inverters, I don't remember them opening them up. I'll have to check the footage...

 

[nwdiver]

Being an electronic engineer and having consulted on the design of inverters for SMA in the past, I generally agree with that statement, EXCEPT an inverter can do some pretty nasty stuff in home systems for certain types of failures. Somewhat related, I've seen simple power surges from other equipment in a home to cause damage to other devices, so I don't doubt an inverter flea can push over a dog. Been there, seen it, fixed it.

That's just odd; Is it usually a voltage spike or a dip? I'm just trying to envision how a grid-tied inverter can cause a disturbance significant enough to damage other appliances without it being absorbed by the grid. Off-grid or an islanded grid-tie that's not shutting down like it should? I can 100% see that causing a problem...

 

[Rockster]

I very much doubt Walmart was timing this lawsuit to anything else other than their legal team's internal schedules.

The fact that Walmart installed 240 solar roofs is proof enough that they at least wanted green street cred. Suing Tesla was no doubt a last ditch attempt to make themselves whole. Do you really want to roll the dice on 3% of your stores catching fire? That's a big fat NO. They had no choice but to either extensively overhaul the systems or tear them and start over. Given a roof caught fire even after it was turned off, they are forced to remove. Hence the lawsuit. Don't over complicate things.

And WalMart is renowned for pinching every penny. It's entirely believable that they would want every system removed rather than risk future loss and that they'd want the removal to cost them exactly zero dollars. It's believable, also, that Tesla, ever mindful of their bottom line, would say they were going to fix or remove the systems that had problems but not bear the cost of removing systems that didn't. Hence, the impasse.

 

[imjustdave]

WOW I read the complaint and honestly I can see Walmart's point of view. Sounds like Tesla ignored basic things on the install, has ignored requests for info and basic maintenance and repair ETC. I feel at this point Walmart is also drawing a line in the sand and giving notice that if something epic happens, building burns down, someone is injured severely ETC they will be looking at Tesla as someone responsible. Ontop of the Fix the system that was installed.

 

[imjustdave]

I got the feeling in the paper work that Tesla owns all the gear and Walmart just rents the roof and access to sell the power back. If not at the very least it appear obvious Tesla is on some sort of maintenance plan and it was all 1 big package, making it a turn key system for Walmart... if you notice Tesla deactivate all the systems not Walmart.

 

[vickh]

More like an anti-customer problem: when anything goes sideways Post delivery (cars) or post-install (solar), good luck finding someone at Tesla to take ownership of the problem and make things right.

Small customers (us, car owners) grumble and move on. Large customers (Walmart), sue the company to extract desired resolution.
Same root cause, different remedies.

Spawning conspiracy theories around this is unnecessary and lame.

a

Good points. Had referral miles issue with Tesla (not alone) and no luck. The org is very bureaucratic even if someone wants to help.

 

[qdeathstar]

7 fires 240 installs. It’s easy to see why Walmart wants all of them removed. The other ones haven’t caught fire yet...

 

[vickh]

Ummmm.... probably because Tesla have been intractable and refused to acknowledge their culpability in all of this or come up with an acceptable mitigation plan.

In my area we have several small but well established solar installation companies and then we have solar city who appears to be entirely staffed with pimply faced kids who don't look like they know DC from AC.

they must share the pimply faced kids from car sales

 

[willow_hiller]

7 fires 240 installs. It’s easy to see why Walmart wants all of them removed. The other ones haven’t caught fire yet...

If this were a widespread problem, you think we'd have heard about it from some of the other hundreds of solar installs Solar City performed.

 

[Silicon Desert]

That's just odd; Is it usually a voltage spike or a dip? I'm just trying to envision how a grid-tied inverter can cause a disturbance significant enough to damage other appliances without it being absorbed by the grid. Off-grid or an islanded grid-tie that's not shutting down like it should? I can 100% see that causing a problem...

Great comment and question. First off, I like your flea knocking over a dog metaphor I might just steal that comment in the future.

Yes, odd. In the "very few" instances (only 3 I can remember), the inverter failures caused a huge spike (as you mention) that went across the 240 legs, and they were grid-tied inverters. In two of those cases, a large electrolytic cap blew out. That's why I like inverters such as the SolarEdge (and a couple others) that don't use large caps. It's one of the first things to fail and they don't survive a long life in regular heat. Not usually a problem to anything else when they fail, yet as I mentioned, it has occurred. In one case of an inverter failure, it "blasted" out the circuit breaker in the panel. That was a surprise. In my own experience, long ago, I had a couple electronic devices in a prior home coincidentally fail when a larger starter capacitor (electrolytic) failed in one of my A/C unit. That was also a rare surprise. Usually nothing else is harmed.

You probably know this already, but for the sake of some folks here, when attaching a storage oscilloscope on the 120 VAC lines in a home, and triggering it on spikes above 180 volts you'll see regular spikes from things that have motors (like some refrigerators) that put an inductive kickback into the line when they turn off. You'll see the biggest spikes (dip and spike) when the air conditioning compressor turns on and off. You've probably noticed the lights dim for second when it kicks on. Almost always never large enough or long enough to be a problem, yet can be seen. So not far fetched to see how an inverter disaster can cause the damage to home devices as claimed above in a post. Especially since I have seen a couple in person. Again, RARE.

As a side note, in my home, I installed a large surge suppressor tied into the garage panel. It prevents (or reduces) regular short spikes (mainly from large appliances and my table saw, compressor, etc) from going across the AC lines, but of course a big enough problem from the grid or other nasty failure can still get through if it were to happen.

 

[qdeathstar]

If this were a widespread problem, you think we'd have heard about it from some of the other hundreds of solar installs Solar City performed.

So Walmart is setting fire to there own stores in a conspiracy against Tesla?

 

[nwdiver]

Yes, odd. In the "very few" instances (only 3 I can remember), the inverter failures caused a huge spike (as you mention) that went across the 240 legs, and they were grid-tied inverters. In two of those cases, a large electrolytic cap blew out.

So basically a very flawed inverter. I can kinda see that and as you mention it's going to be exceedingly rare. But I don't see how an improper install could really lead to this unless they series'd two strings that were supposed to be in parallel or something equally as crazy...