A national plan must be drawn up for tackling fires where glass is released from solar panels, says the North Holland North Environment Agency. Last week, two sheds burned down at a bulb company in Moerbeek. Then the wider area was littered with small pieces of glass from solar panels that had been spread by the fire.
Cleaning up the shattered glass is expensive and time consuming. “Nobody knows the solution to this problem,” says Louis Winder of the Environment Service NH News.
Employees of the affected bulb company, together with a remediation company, have been collecting the pieces of glass for days. It concerns more than a million square meters of land. “We have never experienced this before,” says Klaas Limmen of the remediation company. “We can’t help but pick it up by hand.”
A lot of smoke was released during the fire. The glass of the broken solar panels is spread in the area with those clouds of smoke. “It’s very light stuff and it crumbles almost immediately when you take it in your hands,” says Winder. “It is harmful to cows and other grazers. If they eat this, they can have stomach bleeding.”
Quick consultation
In the Noordoostpolder municipality in Flevoland, too, a brand in a shed glass of solar panels free. Because it was unclear whether the blackened glass pieces were harmful, farmers in the area were not allowed to harvest and their animals had to stay indoors. This week was known that crops that grow underground can be harvested again.
The North Holland North Environment Agency urges rapid consultation. “Nobody has thought about that yet,” said spokesman Winder. “We see more and more barns and sheds with solar panels. I think that we should conduct national research into this and that we should come to protocols.”
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