Hi all.
Do any of you isolate/switch off your Eskom supply & Panels to the inverter during a thunderstorm?
Is it necessary?
The electrical energy in a highveld thunderstorm is extreme. You would be wise to trip the CBs/pull the fuses to protect your inverter.
In the days of ADSL modems that were connected to landline telephone lines these could not be protected unless you disconnected them. You needed to replace them regularly. Compare this with the ONTs we have these days…
In Cpt, we now get little farts vs 30 years ago the burps compared to highvledt thunder and lightning.
If I’m around I disconnect the panels. Will help if there is a close strike.
Direct strikes, nothing will help.
A almost neighbour of mine had a direct strike on a tree in front of his house a couple of weeks ago which was weird in itself, since there are much taller trees close bye.
It took out absolutely everything in his house which was plugged in, down to the 44 downlights in the ceiling.
All fuses on the solar system popped and his Sunsynk inverter also had to be replaced, even the alternator of his generator which was connected to the system got fried.
I don’t even want to imagine the repair bill, I’m scared to ask him.
This is normally covered by your bond insurance.
There is a hefty claim fee that you need to pay to apply for the damages. But having done so all costs are covered.
Ensure that you check everything is ok because they will close the claim and will not entertain further claims later…
Yes, close strike is like in a ±km range.
Yeah, that is mostly tickets.
I remember growing up on the farm, when there was heavy weather my father would disconnect everything. The connection between the solar panels and the batteries had a repurposed 3-point plug on it (we were actually within the amperage limits 
), and that could be pulled. The house similar had a plug which isolated the entire thing, you could move the wiring apart physically. The television would be unplugged both at the wall, and the aerial, and the cable would be physically moved a meter away from anything it could jump to.
With all this, a really close strike could still cause a 60W 32V lamp to glow a bit. Big thunderstorms are no joke.
We had a lightning rod just outside the back door though. You could smell the Ozone sometimes.
During the Boer War the British fatalities from lightening strikes were greater than from military encounters.
Uuuuh… I’m not sure I believe that. The British lost 22 000 soldiers in the boer wars, and 800 just in one battle at Isandlwana (granted, different war, but provides some concept of scale). Some stats I googled into suggested that 54 got killed by lightning strikes, while 142 was due to railway accidents, 55 due to suicide, 2 by bees, and 1 by a crocodile.
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Well that means they didn’t have many military encounters? 
I’m a radio amateur, in other words a lightning magnet.
I got used to plugging out my antennas when I’m not in front of my radios, even a quick drive to the shop, away for 15 minutes when I still stayed in town could catch you out with a thunder storm rolling in.
In the radio fraternity there’s a lot of old wives tails around, many of them coming from the CB world I think. One of them is to place your antenna wire in a glass jar when disconnecting it, I have never done this, I can only imagine glass shrapnel flying all over my house.
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Apologies. I need to dig up the article where I read this.
I clearly got this wrong but let me pursue this a bit more…
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Where I live in Kranspoort, we have severe lightning storms. I normally switch my DC off and also the AC Circuit breaker as lightning aproaches. In January this year even with the AC CB off I lost my inverter during a lightning storm. The spike still managed to get through on the AC feed. Since then, I installed a 32amp Caravan plug between the inverter and the AC DB, which only gets plugged in during cloudy days. Much safer…
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Did you have surge protection installed at all?
Yes, I had the single pole CBI surge arrestor installed. Seems that it was insufficient protection.